Matches to Paper Dolls
by paintingoncobwebs
Summary: Post finale. Rumplestiltskin doesn't get Belle back as whole as he would have liked but Regina is willing to correct the problem. For a price. - Rumplestiltskin/Belle, Regina/Belle.
1. Heartless

**Chapter 1  
**

**Hear****tless**

* * *

There are two things vital to understand about Rumplestiltskin's relationship with Belle.

The first is an absolute truth: "You love me."

He nods in confirmation of her words, no hesitation, no doubt.

The second is an unquestionable lie: "I love you."

"Belle..."

"You believe me," she says, "you do." To a certain extent, yes.

"I love you." She enunciates each word like maybe if she says it enough times it will become a fact.

"Don't."

"Kiss me," she says, because for Belle this apathy is something they can overcome and should make the most of.

Belle always makes the most of any situation.

"Kiss me," she repeats, "and we'll always remember."

Always remember their first kiss, their only kisses, were founded on lies and convenience.

He turns away from her. She doesn't understand, not like he does, not like Regina does. Magic is not as profound or intimate to her as it is to them.

A heartless girl cannot love, no matter how logically she knows she does.

* * *

Crash.

Thud.

Whimper.

The splash of blood falling to the floor.

These are the sounds Rumplestiltskin's been listening to for a solid half hour now and he can't really say they're music to his ears but they do help to unravel the tension headache he's had for the past seventy four hours.

The source of these onomatopoeias is lying flat on the ceiling and he has to stand directly beneath her because her hair is obscuring her face and he wants to look into her eyes.

It's only been a few years they've been at odds and barely several days of hatred between them so it feels _off_ that they've reached this point already.

But she's earned her pain and blood loss. She's earned her concussion and bruises.

She has, but just to clarify, so there's no misunderstandings, "You understand why I'm doing this?"

She must. She is the Evil Queen and if anyone knows the burning want to hurt the person who stood between you and happiness, who _is standing_ between you and happily ever after, it is the woman who's spent her adult life haunting a small child.

_Queen_ Snow White.

Regina says nothing and it's like ice running through his veins.

"Of course you do," he says, "of course, of course."

Rumplestiltskin is not a creature of instinct. He's pure calculation, reevaluation and structure. He's a chess match, not an artist, but he can feel, with each brush stroke of chilled blood coursing over his bones, that this impressively obnoxious silence of Regina's is more than pride.

He carries on because he so loves a show, "You see, your Majesty – pay attention, now. This is important – this," he says, gesturing between the two of them, the two of them and then the room at large, "isn't fun for me." Hmm... "either."

And it isn't, this isn't Rumplestiltskin's style.

There's a fairy flying around, the catalyst of the most profound and defining moment of his life, the orchestrator of all his anger and cruelty, because he never ripped off her wings. He never made the Reul Ghorm bleed, it's unthinkable that Regina, _Regina_, is the one he's torturing.

Physically.

But Regina has something she can provide where the Reul Ghorm does not.

"Then," Regina says, breathless and low, "Get to your point."

For a moment he thinks she doesn't know. That he's missed a fantastic speech giving moment of dramatics.

Ah, but no. She's too smooth for that. People like them, they don't throw out questions they don't know the answers to.

"Where is it?"

"Let me go." He likes this retaliation of hers. They know each other so well; contracts, transactions and brokered deals.

He can't believe she doesn't catch herself when gravity slams her to the floor. She knew where that request was going to lead.

Regina struggles to collect herself. She has to brace her hands against the wall to stand up and as she wipes the blood from her lips she admonishes, "Mature, Gold. Very mature."

It's like ice.

This glibness of hers is superficial.

This flippant retort is a sham.

It is.

... But however fine an actress Regina may or may not be, she still needs a script in order to sell the part. She knows something he doesn't. She has something he's not aware of.

"'Gold'?" he asks, "Are we still playing that game, dear? Will the angry mob be chanting for 'Mayor Mills' when they light their pitchforks?"

She falters. The threat of Storybrooke's revenge alarms her even though she's standing beside him, full in the knowledge that her life is forfeit to him, tonight.

Regina doesn't flinch when he closes the distance between them and she doesn't baulk when he puts his fingers under her chin. He turns her head this way and that way and her eyes are bright and calculating no matter what angle he views them in. "Where is it?"

"You'll have to be more specific."

"No more games!" His fingers close around her jaw, forcing her focus, "Where's Belle's heart?"

"Oh," Regina says, "That."

Oh.

That.

He wants nothing more than an I'll-Do-Anything moment of terror from her. He wants to make her grovel. But she hasn't yet and that might just mean she's never going to.

"My Queen," he says, "My dear Queen," it's the first time he's heard a song in his voice in twenty nine years, "Don't make me beg." A gorgeous Kodak moment of having her cut her own throat takes root and is unshakable. He says, "Plea-"

Regina raises her hand and puts her fingers to his lips, "Shh, shh, shh..." It's the first time he's seen the Queen in her eyes, "_Try me._"

It's unlikely the world has stopped to indulge this moment between them, but it's so very quiet, so very still. It's like the universe obeys when Regina tells it to be silent.

Not even air disturbs two of the most powerful beings alive during a standoff, it mustn't and that's why he doesn't breathe.

Rumplestiltskin stares into Regina's eyes, into the windows of her soul, like maybe he can burn out her thoughts and know what sabotage she has planned.

Regina says, "I want to make a deal," and the moment shatters.

The universe falls back into place, the colors brighten, the sounds of the city outside blare and Rumplestiltskin draws breath to laugh.

She can't outwit him. It is laughable to entertain it. He's the master of words, of loop holes and fine print. It would take but a moment to find the perfect phrasing, the airtight command that could not be deviated from.

Her confidence is all bravado.

But, then...

He can visualize, with absolute clarity, a crystal clear image of Regina crying. Regina crying over her father's body. Regina crying over her child's body. All of her Henry's dead.

Because of him.

She doesn't forgive. She never forgives.

She asks, "What will it be, Rumple?"

Her eyes are as malicious as he's ever seen them.

He has the words and she has the revenge.

He lets her go and she rubs her jaw where his fingers have bruised, "Good boy."

_She's fucking pushing it._

"A deal?" There is not a soul in existence he trusts less than hers and, directly following Regina, a truly desperate soul.

And, of course, Regina has to be both. She always has to crowd the stage. Desperation in concert with power.

The moment he has what he wants she's dead and she knows it. There's nothing to stop her doing everything in her power to destroy Belle and there's nothing to suggest she can't pull it off.

"Or aren't there two interested parties?"

Heh.

Bitch.

"A blind deal." She says.

A blind deal... "Oh, is that all you want?" She's asking for anything, for everything, for surprise twists and turns and _him_.

Regina says, "I'll wait while you consider your options."

Well, well, well. So this is how people feel when dealing with him. So much on the line that they'll say 'anything. Whatever you want. Name it.'

"For her heart?"

"Once I'm satisfied."

"_For Belle's heart, Regina._"

He can't remember the last time he used her name.

She's not quite evil enough to laugh, "For the return of your lover's safe, whole, unbroken heart," she confirms in that precise and exact manner he so loves to hear when dealing.

Then adds, "Well. No more broken than how I found it."

She won't sign a contract, oh no, nothing written by him, so when she holds out her hand Rumplestiltskin takes it and they shake, business partners once again. He leans in close and she doesn't move away even when their noses touch, but he didn't really expect her to. He says, "Your Majesty?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm going to destroy you."

Regina's fingers tighten around his hand, "My house has more room, but, as you say, the _angry mob_ will be coming. Shall I pack?"

Surprise Number One: Protection.

* * *

Storybrooke is Regina's story. Regina's and, perhaps, his. They created it, cultivated it, nurtured it like stern and loving parents for 28 years.

The honeymoon ends and the bickering starts until the inevitable you-have-been-served divorce papers roll in and the custody battle for their precious child begins. Worlds are razed, lives are lost.

Storybrooke is Regina's story, it has to be, because otherwise her life belongs to another.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Regina's name isn't even in it. 'Queen' 'Witch' 'Stepmother.'

Beauty and the Beast

Well, at least he's a title character, but his story is Belle's. The audience sits back and watches her fall in love and nobody asks what the Beast thinks about it. She is Beauty and he should be so lucky.

But he is and he knows it, so when he walks in the door with Regina in tow and Belle cringes he doesn't tell her that she's the alimony.

Belle says, "What... I don't understand, what is _she_ doing here?"

He should have called. He doesn't think Belle was crazy so she can probably work a phone from implanted knowledge of this realm. But he hasn't asked if no one questioned her quarantine because Regina had them under her thumb or because it was medically necessary.

"Belle-"

Regina interrupts, "You've lost weight, dear. Isn't he feeding you?"

They need ground rules.

Belle says, "Meals at eight, twelve and six."

"Witty girl."

He wants to step in. He wants to dashingly tell the Queen about sticks and stones and _broken bones_ but Belle's feigning nonchalance and he's afraid of making her look weak by standing up for her. That the implication of telling Regina to spare them her passive aggressive arrogance will translate into 'Belle needs protection from any and all.'

And, anyways, he knows intimately that Belle can handle taunts.

It doesn't stop his hands curling into fists or his teeth clenching.

Or interrupting.

When Rumplestiltskin gestures past the entry way his hand parts them, "Drawing Room," he says, pointing across the way. "Office," left, "Dining Room," right, "kitchen," left again, "_cellar_," down-

"Guest room," Regina says, pointing up the stairs. "I know. I made this house."

Made, yes, but it's more likely she's used her blasted keys to snoop around.

"I'll get my things," Belle says, giving her room to the wicked witch.

For a moment it nags at him that her relocation will take one trip. He should have showered her with _stuff_ the moment he realized she was alive, but she barely has a handful of items to call her own.

Just like old times.

As Belle walks past them Regina follows behind, takes a quick extra step closer and leans in close to whisper something in her ear...

Rumplestiltskin grips her arm and stops her, Belle none the wiser, "No tomfoolery, dearie."

"I like this protective streak in you. It's so... _manly_." Louder then she asks, "Which of you will be slitting my throat while I sleep?"

Belle can't get away from Regina fast enough.

* * *

Belle has nightmares.

Tossing and turning with fear, despair, sweat and tears.

In the morning she walks around in a zombie haze, a pallid flush to her skin that dissipates around ten o'clock and she says, "Would you stop worrying. I'll get over it."

She's a broken record; Don't Worry, Don't Worry, Don't Worry. Always so quick to assure him he has no blame. She's always there to remind him he could not have known.

She means it, he knows, every word. She's sincere in her insincerity and she's not acting, not really, though not even insomniacs watching infomercials would believe her performance.

And then the nightmares are gone and Rumplestiltskin tells her how beautiful she looks when she's well rested.

Rumplestiltskin knows a thing or two about the perfect timing evil has, so he's unsurprised when the wretched hag is there to scoff, "The shining image of perfection, hmm?"

Belle glares and sighs and he knows she's truthful, even if her eyes are listless.

Regina has a mess of papers that she holds inches from him, "Tell her something she doesn't know."

His nails brush Regina's as he takes the papers. It's hard to put bite in such a small motion, but the sentiment is there.

Written is a novel of madness. Scribbles in the margins, words circling, skipping and diagonally spaced over the college-ruled lines like she's failed the elementary lessons of writing between them. There are equations shoved between magical principles, words crossed out, written over each other, math and bylaws and spells and curses and pictures proving Regina is no artist.

This is insane, but he sees the hypothesis: attempting to combine two realms worth of vastly different schooling.

Potions brewing in cauldrons don't exist here.

Mathematical theorems don't exist there.

And there's not a sentence that doesn't endeavor to combine the two. It's pure incoherent chaos, "Gone off the deep end, then." But Rumplestiltskin still tries to sus it out.

There's an energy about Regina that can lead to nowhere good. She sits across from him, next to Belle, and it distracts him instantly.

He's the only one who notices, both staring, intent and curious, for his analysis.

Very well.

Back to homework, then.

There's a pattern, so disarrayed he questions if the woman who wrote it is aware.

He has to turn the papers around and around to read them and he glares at Regina each time he does.

He's read, scrutinized, interpreted and perfected the workings of men driven mad in their genius. Women wholly incomprehensible in their virtuosity, but this is-

Click.

The moment madness finds method.

His mind rearranges what he's reading, catalogues and reorganizes Regina's... small glimmer of perhaps something akin to brilliance... into a clear translation.

Regina. Oh, Regina.

She's like a child playing a game, thinking him the cheat code override. "Pure magic can't be contained." Directed, yes, influenced, but never tamed. He can't imagine how, in the accumulation of three hundred years, she supposes this idea never swept through his head. "If it could be done," he tells her, "I would have done it."

No one knows what it's like to be a god better than he – well, perhaps Reul Ghorm – but this is... hah! He chuckles at first and when he meets her eyes, shining and obsessive, he laughs.

"Have I told you how endearing your self-image is?" Regina asks.

She has, but, "Never so politely, dearie."

Belle leans forward to look at the notes and Rumplestiltskin slides them to her. She doesn't have a hope of deciphering them but he doesn't like his love being shunned out of the circle if she wants to be inside.

Regina says, "The ground work is already laid," you're welcome, "The magic from the Well is untainted. Flawless. No corruption, no contamination."

Pure.

Innocent.

Uninfected.

This is her thesis.

Corruption. Contamination. Poisoning the magic Well with spores or germs or viruses. Tying an infection so tightly to the magic that it can never be separated, and then...

Infections cannot function without a host and to have a host a parasite must be able to recognize, to instinctively know, where to find suitable conditions; serviceable homes in which to remain sentient.

And everything sentient has the hard-wired instinct to survive.

But diseases spread plague. They must be quarantined least they infect a nation.

There's something Regina hasn't taken into account, however: viruses are not harmless things.

"It'll kill you, dearie." Devour her from the inside out, take control of her body, mind and soul until nothing remains.

Just like, say, cursed knives.

If, of course, if it is cursed.

Curses come with blackened cruel intent and there's nothing to say this is the case. He never has figured out who made the knife. How. Perhaps it is not evil, perhaps it's simply the cause and effect of magic so powerful it's angry to be ensnared.

But he can't tell Regina this and, anyways, she's already intimately aware small magic's can have a deadly price.

And this is not small.

Regina drums her fingers on the table like he's speaking nonsense and maybe he is.

He supposes she wouldn't have come to him if she wasn't already aware and obvious facts are a bit silly to use as threats.

It is insanely and absolutely maddening that this childish witch, with less than two decades of magical knowledge, has found components he's never considered.

Though these rules only apply in this realm.

That's how he comforts himself. He never failed to put two-and-two together, he's never failed to realize this, not for all his years, Regina just got to the _formal science_ of the matter before him.

He'd call her a savant if he didn't want to choke her on her own notes.

"Devil's advocate," he says.

"Sure."

"Assuming you could bind pure magic," he holds up a stern finger, "born of True Love, mind you, and isolate it into a vessel-"

"Like you did."

"No." No, he didn't and she knows that, "A human body could never survive it."

She raises her eyebrow like she can't believe he just brought that up. If she had all the variables needed to accomplish this on her own, she would.

Variables.

There's a great deal of science needed for this and Mayor Mills doesn't have the education for that. Neither, for that matter, does Mr. Gold.

He glances at Belle, quiet and not quite following.

She'll be hopeless too, then.

This could take years.

"A new deal-"

"No new deals," Regina snaps, passionate and unbending.

There's a quiet lull and with it Belle believes it safe to interrupt, "What's it mean?" she asks, "What's it say?"

Regina latches onto Belle's interest, "A heartless girl can't love, Rumplestiltskin."

Ouch.

He doesn't look at Belle, very carefully doesn't throw any of this burdening weight on her, but... maybe that is exactly what he wanted to hear. Maybe that is his excuse. No one can fault him if there exists an altruistic reason for his actions.

Out of the goodness of his heart, for his true love, he'll create unthinkable evil.

* * *

Belle finds him that night in the den, trying to organize Regina's ideas into something cohesive that can be laid out, charted and divvied into ranks. He's trying to find the starting point angle that will give them the best route to follow.

"You don't have to sleep on the couch," she says.

He looks up and dear god, she's a Dali masterpiece.

Out of place, abstract and profound in his nightwear. The silk shirt, _his_ silk, hanging too large off her and the pants, _his_ pants, falling low, unable to get a proper grip no matter how tight the drawstring.

"Sleep! Is that what you think we're doing, dearie?"

Belle smiles, taking the quip as it's meant, "She needs you," Belle relocates papers to sit beside him on the couch.

She's close enough that he can smell the sterile isolation scent clinging to her hair that his shampoo just won't evict.

He turns on the stereo because mood music is a wonderful cliché in this realm. "Not in one piece, she doesn't." Smooth Jazz, 106.4 SB FM. Lovely.

"Her door's locked and I don't think she-" Belle jumps in surprise and, in turn, it startles him. "Oh! I thought we were alone."

He checks his periphery and sees no reason to question otherwise. "We are."

She frowns, cocks her head and gives him a peculiar look like he's so very bizarre.

It takes him a moment to put it together and when he does he finds the answer to his unasked question: the true diagnosis of Belle's sanity.

He laughs at her because it's just easier and points to the entertainment center, "It's a 'sound system'," he says, complete with air quotes, "it plays sound." Or, perhaps... He gestures dramatically, in a way he hasn't done in decades, "Or there are little men inside playing instruments."

She is so long suffering and oh, how he has missed the look she gives him (now, right now, in the present and right in front of him), to inform him thusly.

She looks at the stereo with intense interest, eyebrows raised and curious.

It's the same look she gave the refrigerator, when he'd thought her amused at its bachelor contents. It's the same way she had looked at the cars when he thought her interested in the makes and models. It's the same as the bathrooms and the clothes.

Belle wasn't crazy. She just wasn't reformatted in preparation for new data storage. She was static, like everyone else, for 28 years, but lacking the necessary patch to mend the holes.

Regina made her static, existing as a mysterious girl in a mysterious ward with a mysterious purpose.

Regina's terrible at patience but a pro at underhanded cunning, so she saved Belle until she had a reason to activate her. To give her purpose.

Belle waited, for 28 years, to be real.

Belle's adaptable. She's adaptable here as she was in the Dark Castle when he never bothered to explain his home; a place so completely different from where she'd grown up. He'd assumed, correctly, that she would just figure it out on her own. Shrugged it off because, while it was controlled by magic in a way she'd never borne witness to (The candles that never dimmed, the temperature that remained always perfect, the way the water was always warm and the pantry was always stocked) it was also relatively straight forward.

Things had taken longer for her at first, sure, but not _that_ much longer. Things fell into place. But here, now... He should have asked this time. She's no longer that new caretaker who danced for his amusement.

Belle never mentioned, though. Quietly willing to watch and learn. And, well, he can't recall a time she's needed to know and, moreover, he can't recall a time that's been suitable to ask.

Drama, drama, drama. Theirs is a rousing life.

Belle says, "Everyone here has magic, don't they?"

Rumplestiltskin supposes they do.

In a way.

A non-magical way.

Now might be a good time to answer some questions, but first, "What do you mean 'her door's locked', dearie?"

Belle raises her eyebrow like she's not sure that's actually a question so much as a self-explanatory rhetoric.

"Her door," Belle says in an 'I have faith you can figure this out!' tone, "_is_ locked."

He tries again, "What do _you_ mean 'her door's locked'?"

"Oh."

Yes, very good, "Oh." he mimics.

Mockingly.

Belle says, "I checked on her, on my way down." When he says nothing, she quips, "To make sure she was in one piece."

Ah. The reason why Belle was never allowed to learn this new realm, all these common sense earthly things:

"She spoke kindly of you."

Yes, oh yes, he just bets she did.

Rumplestiltskin says, "I know."

It would have been important, so excruciatingly vital, that Belle remained in love with him. It _is_ vital. For thirty two years Regina has known that the minute Belle resents him, the second she reviles him is the moment she becomes a pointless pawn.

You can't make someone love you but you can make them hate and once that happens it's so very hard to get the spark back.

Regina needs that spark.

Belle says, "Maybe, if you tried-"

"No." The request isn't worth a second thought. "She told me you were dead." _That's_ the woman she wants him to coddle.

"I know." Belle's smile is stretched and strained, but it's trying. "'You're alive' gave that away." She reaches for him and even though she's only offering physical contact as a means to manipulate him he doesn't pull away. "But she's here and this anger and quarreling is getting you nowhere." She nods encouragingly, "So, if you tried-"

"It's not going to happen."

"Rumplestiltskin."

"Belle."

She sighs and he says, "Why do you care?"

It's possible he could have said a worse thing but, judging by her stern and betrayed expression, he doubts it.

Bad move for someone who already knows the answer.

Belle never fights. Or, more accurately, she rarely fights. He's never known her to be hostile, not in the face of dungeons or taunting or actions performed solely to rile her.

She finds it stressful. She hates it. She wants to ease the glares and derision and bold threats between the Evil Queen and the Dark One, trapped together, because it hurts her very mentality. It makes her miserable.

She thinks it must weigh heavily on them in turn.

Belle is calm and patient and it had been so very aggravating and taken so very long to appreciate her unrelenting optimism.

Looks like he's going to have to learn to appreciate it all over again. How exciting...

"I don't." She's too mature to actually say '_Fine. Whatever. You win. Happy now?_' but it's there, catty and discouraged, "I'm going to bed, if you want..." he shakes his head and she continues, "You could give me a kiss goodnight?"

He turns back to his research and listens to her leave.

* * *

It's five in the morning and only one of them has slept.

They leave Belle at his shop, combing through layers of boxes and displays and remnants of the _old world's_ treasures he's squirreled away. There are shelves and shelves and a storage basement full of stuff and what they need most are books.

Belle might not know magic, but she knows her literature.

And the less she's seen with them, Storybrooke's Most Wanted, the happier he is.

Regina takes him to her father's crypt and, inside, places her hands determinedly on a tomb. "Help me move this?"

Secret passage ways, hidden tunnels, underground compartments. He almost smiles.

Actually, he does, but it's wiped off his face before it's fully formed because, when he flicks his fingers, nothing happens.

The coffin blocking the entrance doesn't budge.

He's a clever lad; he figures it out:

Someone able to meticulously take a thing apart is, by default, able to meticulously reassemble it.

Regina so loved his company that she couldn't bear the torturous seconds that ticked by after knocking on his door. The terrible wait before being permitted entrance was too hellish.

Or something.

She liked to break his locks and she did it without the need of skeleton keys.

She used the knowledge of their weaknesses to reinforce her own.

She's toying with him.

"You don't want to fight me, dearie," he warns.

Possibly reminds.

It depends on the point of view.

"What's a small jest between friends?"

He breaks the coffin because, try as she might, his is the superior power. It's a welcome mercy that the tomb is empty, "What's punitive damages?"

The Evil Queen and the Dark One in small claims court.

Down the stairs is an underground temple, shelves of trinkets and slots and boxes, just like his shop but more precious for their sentimentality.

Far, far more precious as he stares at the compartments in back.

Which one is Belle's, he wonders. Which box contains her heart...

He would have to break their deal to find out.

Young Henry paid the price for Regina's foolish magic and Belle might just pay for his.

Their jests are never innocent.

Of course she put a deadbolt on her father's empty tomb, because so very many trespassers assume coffins are hidden passageways, but these vaults along the walls are of actual import. There's no doubt there are traps, triggers and defensive consequences of opening one.

Regina didn't bring him here to lure and bait him, but it sure as hell feels like it.

Regina's scouring the room, pulling out anything that has the promise to be of use and she doesn't look at him, oh so arrogant, when he runs his fingers over the security boxes locked up tight and dear, "Come here, Rumple."

He expertly conveys, '_burn at the stake, Reggie_' with a single look.

"Which one is it?"

"If you ask politely, I'll tell you."

He never, _never_ thought he'd see the day she'd goad him into not saying 'please.'

"So close," she says, "and so far away."

She expertly conveys, '_you first, dearie_' with a single look.

She has a dozen books stacked at her feet and this time her request is sincere, "Help me carry these," and, because she's a first class bitch, "please."

There was a time, and it really wasn't so long ago, when they could work together without all this boiling, uncontainable fury. He remembers plotting with her, scheming with her and he remembers the harmony of their laughter and how no one appreciated the melody but them. He remembers tea and biscuits and not having his every other thought filled with ways to hurt her nor his words aimed to break her.

Their civil conversations were not always laced with malice and the want to put the other in their place.

But he doesn't know how to change that, not even with Belle pleading so sweetly in his ear, when he wants nothing more than to crush her.

* * *

Creative differences take less than an hour to arise.

Logically, yes, sacrifices will have to be made on both sides to accommodate and adapt to each other's methodology. He knows this and accepts it as fact.

But he's older and wiser. He's more powerful and it's _his_ help Regina needs.

Despite this stellar logic, Regina doesn't relent.

She says it's organized chaos, this shambling mess of books and papers and print out copies of data, but he's not buying it.

Nothing so cluttered can be conducive to production.

Regina says, "I like to see what I'm working on."

Visual cues.

Sophomoric.

"Trees for the forest?" That's a new one, "Power requires elegance. Elegance requires precision. Precision-"

"Screw your Feng Shui, Rumplestiltskin. Buy yourself a loom and meditate with that."

Belle stands on the sidelines, willing to quietly weather out the storm as she looks around the room, at the books, the papers and the laptops sprawled every which way.

Rumplestiltskin takes the fact that she has to step around and crane her head as support for his side.

"I can't work like this," he says with all the put upon ire of an overly appreciated artist, spoiled by acclaim.

"This is how I work and you work for me." She raises her eyebrow, "It's settled."

He seethes, "Oh, do I?"

"I'm sorry, is there confusion on the matter? Shall I spell out the repercussions of your disobedience-"

A series of fast, loud and irritating claps chop through the air and cut her off. Startled, they both turn to the source.

Belle, who hasn't spoken a word in over an hour, is standing there with a glower of frustration. She looks, he thinks, like a mother with children in their Terrible Two's.

He'll go out on a limb as assume she's not applauding them.

"Thank you," she says now that all eyes are on her, "I have a suggestion."

It's only by virtue of his general support for all things Belle that he doesn't share a put upon look with Regina.

"The only problem I see is 'confusion.'" Her eyes are hopeful for agreement but she doesn't give them the chance.

For the best.

"You each need to know what is where and how it goes together." So very hopeful, her nods and movements as she picks up a carefully blank paper, "So why not just color code and number your work? Your efforts are going to become disorganized anyways. Rumplestiltskin, you can work in the attic, and her Majesty in the sitting room."

The attic. The closet she can get to a tower.

She chose the sitting room, not the office, for Regina ...why?

Or perhaps that's paranoia. The sitting room _is_ larger.

Regina shoots Belle a 'that's my girl' look that doesn't sit well with him, but she says, "That's ridiculous, Belle. What we need is-"

"_Just try it!_" There's a flavor of desperation. "And if it doesn't work," Belle continues, gently contrite, "we can go back to the drawing board?"

Reluctantly, and with far less incentive than he appreciates, they agree.

Rumplestiltskin is positive this will lead to a rainbow of fights and a tug-of-war battle but, at least, Belle looks proud.

* * *

Regina's writing is clear now that she has room to think. Her thoughts aren't frantic and filled with the fear that her conceptual design will turn to smoke and waft away if she is not quick enough to keep the embers burning.

There's no desperation in her concise and proficient writing and it's easier for Rumplestiltskin to read her work without the ink blots and shaky script of penmanship ruined in the face of white knuckles gripping a pen. Like clenching solid mass is the same as clenching abstract thoughts.

She still slips into standard Gregg shorthand when she loses her patience for prepositions and adjectives but it equates laziness now and not the crafty technique of a woman failing to keep up with her racing intellect.

Everything he sees in her notebook is bland and unimpressive.

Rumplestiltskin doesn't notice it at first, the way she leaves just an extra bit of space between lines, how she never writes in the margins and her quirky annotations of question and exclamation marks in parenthesis. He doesn't realize he's reading homework because he's watching her suffering posture, finger combed hair and far too much knuckle cracking. He sees the determination and ruthless drive and forgets, until page three, that above all Regina is a woman of manipulation.

She hired the Huntsman, framed the Mirror, stole the apple but she has thoughts and brilliance of her own and now that he's seen them it's hard to stomach the knowledge that she's using her connections once again.

Admittedly, it's a grand time having a little helper bee who knows her way around magic, but it's aggravating to have a T.A. capable of leading her own class.

The obsession to figure this out is there, the genius isn't, and he knows why.

Rumplestiltskin comes up behind her and, with that knack for the dramatic that never earns him favors, snatches the notebook from her hands as she's penning some sort of theorem.

He makes a show of skimming it over and says, "You cite your sources." Like a sterile Wikipedia entry.

Her nails scratch his fingers as she tries to take her papers back, "I'm using that."

He ignores her, "I like it. It's cute." He'd pinch her cheeks if he could get away with it, "Adorable. So helpful, thank you your Majesty."

"You're welcome," she deadpans and when he raises the notebook out of her reach she snaps her fingers in a hostile, though painless, gesture, "Now give it-"

"Of course, if I could beg a question?" he turns the notebook around a few times, examining it with all the false pretentiousness it deserves, "shall I grade this in red ink, or blue?"

"What?"

"'What?' Come now, don't be a bore. All this time I'm wasting on you could be better spent teaching Belle how to use the dryer." He leans down, far too close for someone not fond of pain, "That could be useful, hmm?" Useful and something _anyone_ can do.

Regina looks like she has some choice words on this production, but he carries on, "I'm not your master, dearie. You declined that role a long time ago. And isn't that a shame? You might've had some glimmer of confidence to go with your potential."

He winces once the words leave his mouth. Well, he almost winces. Inside, the words pain him because he doesn't want to sit here giving her a pep talk. Rumplestiltskin would much rather have Regina be clever but miserable than encouraged but angry.

"You don't want me to lead," he says, which is true, even though he fully intends to remain in command. But he thinks her capable to take charge with only intelligence on her side and not the cheap mechanics of manipulation, "trust me on that." He mostly sure she's going to take those words with the same seriousness Belle took his warnings on tempting monsters.

He throws the papers at her to make up for being motivational, "Stop asking if you're failing and just fail."

* * *

Things don't get better between them after that.

There's a brief moment that he finds Regina delightful when he can find only red pens, but there isn't enough hilarity in it for him to tell her so.

They can't really keep their distance from each other, not living under the same roof, but they make do. They've successfully avoided each other for a full nine hours and probably could have lasted twenty if Rumplestiltskin hadn't noticed Belle's absence and wondered on it.

Armies have fallen before Regina, kings have genuflected in fear before her and she has brought a world to its knees because of one moment in her past. He does not like that Belle is missing while he doesn't know where Regina is.

Of course, his fears pan out.

Regina's voice snaps, "Belle, I have a ten year old who can do this."

But not for long. Will Regina miss Henry's eleventh birthday? He's sure that'll be a miserable day for her and, consequently, for him.

"What was that?"

"This is child's play."

Rumplestiltskin follows the sound of voices into the kitchen.

At first it appears that Regina is threatening Belle, trapping her between her body and the kitchen counter, but Rumplestiltskin gives the scene a second glance, with eyes not primed to see the worst.

Regina may or may not have purposefully pinned Belle down but she _is_ caught between the witch's hideously perfect body and the coffee machine. She's caught, yes, but there's nothing to suggest she's trapped. She neither looks like she's nervous nor like she's trying to be brave.

They don't look awkward together.

Perhaps not natural or comfortable, but there's an ease there, a familiarity that alarms him.

Belle's so much smaller than Regina that she's easily towered over, but Regina still has to stretch to her toes, as she reaches for the cupboard doors above Belle's head, to make up for the fact that there's a grown woman in her way.

Belle doesn't look desensitized to Regina's presence or even stubborn in refusal to move. She looks...

"You have a child?"

More information everyone knows. Everyone except Belle.

Regina ignores the question and brandishes a coffee filter accusingly at Belle, "Let's try this again, shall we?"

Belle takes it from her and mutters something about how time looks different on digital screens and it's ridiculous you'd have to press one button three times.

Admittedly, one of the things Rumplestiltskin loved first about Belle was her readiness to fetch drinks, but he still doesn't like Regina making her do it.

"What's your child's name?" Belle asks, resetting the coffee maker.

"Henry."

Their ability to move with familiarity alarmed him, but the next words out of Belle's mouth surprise him into something akin to dread.

"Oh!" she says, correctly setting the machine to make a perfect pot, "Like your father." Belle turns to face Regina once more and smiles like she finds the naming of Regina's son so very endearing, "Where is he?"

Rumplestiltskin hadn't forgotten that, where Belle had been with him for months, she'd been with the Queen for years, but it never occurred to him, and it never would have, that Belle was there _with_ Regina.

In his head he saw a dungeon, another solitary cell. He saw Belle shivering with blue lips in winter and sweating, gasping for air in summer.

He's so busy reorganizing this new data into terms that make sense that he's failed to notice the sixth sensed witch has become aware of his presence.

"Dead." Regina says, "It's like you said, child. We can't rely on those who love us to always be there to protect us."

Oh, yes. She knows he's here.

But Belle doesn't or she wouldn't be giving Regina a look he thought was all for him; a look of straining tolerance, always used when he'd taken words out of context and warped them to best suit his interests.

It doesn't matter if that's what Regina has done because that sentence has every intention of haunting him for weeks to come.

"I'm so sorry," No, Belle's not, so Rumplestiltskin takes pleasure from that. But he feels a great, overwhelming need to correct her assumption.

But, of course, telling Belle Regina killed her own father is opening the door for an explanation as to why and who had her do so.

If he stays out of sight Regina will supply more information, but she won't do it kindly. "'Sorry'?" he asks, stepping into the kitchen, "Why ever for?"

He can be unkind too.

Regina does not step away so Belle's forced to slip out beneath her, "I'm making coffee." She segues doubtfully. There's a mixed expression on Belle's face, like she's embarrassed to be caught in a compromising situation, but has no idea why it's compromising or worthy of embarrassment.

Belle spares a glance at Regina and then corrects herself, "Or trying to." But it's the thought that counts, "It's almost done. Again."

Belle smiles and so he smiles and then Regina smiles and everything is so strained he could pluck it and watch the vibrations.

Belle gestures past them because, apparently, one is not always in the mood to smooth out tension, and says, "I'll get the china."

Aw, he thinks, busting out the good plates from the curio.

Or perhaps she just hasn't pried through the cupboards and isn't aware there's a tarnished set ready for use.

They let her go. Villains though they may be, there's no reason to force her and, perhaps, without Belle between them they'll do better with co-existence.

For five minutes.

There's a mess of filters and coffee blends and it's such a shame Regina's the only one here because he'd like to share a bemused look with someone.

He doesn't notice how close Regina is until she trails her fingers against his back. Her nails scrape across him again and again.

Even as Rumplestiltskin shrugs her off she keeps at it; straight down, diagonal, across.

Regina leans in close until she can whisper in his ear and he doesn't know what irks him more: that she's so close or that she's stealing his mannerisms.

He's the one who enjoys being too close for comfort.

She adds a flavor of seduction and poison to make it her own, "Why didn't you save her, Rumplestiltskin?"

She knows why and he doesn't want to get dragged into _that_ conversation, even if it means letting her have the last word.

Her nails dig into him, shoulder to hip and he thinks, '_scourges and flaying._'

It doesn't matter.

She's lying.

Regina stole his Belle, trapped her away in some form or another but kept her prisoner from him all the same.

Belle was never dragged before the clerics, she was never tortured and she never jumped. Regina wanted him to stew in self-loathing and second hand anguish and, naively, he did.

Regina laughs, "You _still_ don't know?"

She's lying.

She's had Belle for decades, kept as a hopeful bargaining chip.

Magic snaps a static charge and she hisses, "The words you're looking for are 'thank you.'"

Regina stole Belle.

...But when?

Belle returns to say, "You still have the chipped cup?"

"Oh," Regina says to Belle, in a gossiping tone, "do I have a story for you."

* * *

For all his obsessive hatred and scheming revenge there was one possibility Rumplestiltskin failed to consider.

In a way, it should have been his first thought.

But _of course_ it wasn't.

Regina's the air brushed magazine cover of immorality. She's the centerfold of malevolence, the stunning beauty of cruelty and the glamor of gut wrenching agony.

She's sin.

She's torment.

She's _evil._

Rumplestiltskin knows how Maurice feels.


	2. Advice

**Chapter 2  
**

**Advice**

* * *

He can't get Regina's words out of his head, even waking up next to Belle (who had impressively made the argument that they were both adults and it was a large bed, and did this thing with her expressive eyes that made him kowtow to her) he questions if she's safe and whole and thriving.

Belle's _so close_ and he could just quietly move the covers, maybe bust out a little magic trick, look under his shirt that she wears and know for himself. See her perfectly smooth skin or her terribly scarred flesh.

He rolls his eyes. That's not going to happen. He stares at the ceiling and he thinks Regina had several hopes in mind when she did it and beyond the obvious cruelty and wickedness lay an assurance that she, just like he, plays with confirmations.

Confirmations of reality or confirmations that she's aware he holds onto an anguish she imprinted in his mind years ago is the question.

There's not a great deal someone like he can say against the fact that Regina is working an angle, but there's no reason to let her get away with it, either.

He responds in kind.

* * *

Rumplestiltskin clasps a necklace around Belle's throat and runs his fingers over the locket dangling at the end. He tells her how she makes it shine and does it a great service though a more accurate statement would be, 'thank you for your help, m'dear.'

The locket is 10 karat gold, tarnished and dull with age but, despite appearances to the contrary, the hinges are not rusted.

It is not meant to be opened, not yet, and Belle looks disappointed when he shrugs off her request to fix it.

He says, "Later."

Later never comes, as it was never intended to.

_Regina is twenty three and around her neck is a 24 karat gold locket, bejeweled with rich and pricey stones like ruby and diamond. It's gorgeous and stunning; an elegant imitation of its original, designed a hundred years ago by a poor excuse of a blacksmith who'd never handled an authentic gem in his life._

_Rumplestiltskin watches it shine and glitter with false sentimentality and when he looks up to catch Regina's eye her expression is flat and perturbed. It takes him a minute to realize she thinks he's _ogling_ her. _

_Rumplestiltskin laughs, "You've a very lovely locket on today, dearie," though her breasts do continue to be above par, "Very lovely, indeed. Wherever did you buy it?"_

_"I didn't," she says, fingering the small gaudy bauble with all the romanticism Regina possesses for that which she holds dear, "It's a family heirloom."_

_Rumplestiltskin smiles._

_It's a lie. A maternal lie at that; he never would have believed Cora had it in her._

_...There was doubtless a secondary reason._

_He leans in closer to inspect it and Regina looks up, uncomfortable, "It doesn't look very old," he informs her._

_"It was my grandmother's."_

_"Was it?"_

_Yes, well, the original was, stashed away and collecting dust like all his other memorabilia of Deals Gone By. It is little more than a finger snap away from its rightful mistress._

_Bartered to him thirty years ago by a girl, lower than a commoner, lower than a peasant, locked away in a tower and frightened that she would be dead in the morning._

_Cora Mills._

_The Miller's daughter._

_Told that if she didn't spin and spin and spin and turn a room stacked full of straw into gold, her life was forfeit._

_Straw into gold._

_Cora's heirloom; the reason Regina is alive, the reason she sits on a throne._

_Regina's fingers clench around the locket and he backs away. Her eyes are cold and protective and warning him to mind his own business._

_He holds his hands up in surrender, "But what would I know of your family's _rich_ history." _

_Regina's eyes narrow, he smiles, she says, "Quite."_

It's a mere three hours later and they find themselves together in the sitting room.

Regina actually, literally, hilariously points her pen at Belle and moves it up and down, indicating the whole of her. "Now _that's_ curious." She says.

He could not possibly have orchestrated a better script.

Belle frowns and Regina's look is perfectly incredulous and shrewd, "But it is a stylish..."

_Necklace_, Rumplestiltskin finishes in his head, waiting for her to catch on.

But Regina doesn't say 'necklace' she says, "Cardigan," in a sickly sweet voice.

Regina's laughter is a breathy suspicious sound, "Rumplestiltskin, I never knew you could be so... Well, shall-" her words end there.

Cut off.

She frowns.

His turn for the incredulous amusement.

The seconds tick by, one two three fourfivesixseveneight but no one is moving.

The locket disappears from around Belle's neck but, sadly, Regina is the anti-thesis of how he pictured her; how he wanted her to react.

She's calm, composed as she turns to him, invades his space without magic or hissing. She looks wholly levelheaded.

Regina slaps him.

He's so shocked that, for a moment, he's not sure how to respond.

Regina Mills. The Evil Queen. Untold power and formidable wit, lowering herself to fisticuffs.

She holds up her hand, clenched so tight into a fist it's turned white, and dangling from it all he can see is the copper chain. She says, whisper low, speaking through a straining throat, "You son of a bitch."

His cheek stings where the angry red imprint of her hand is.

The longer they square off the paler she becomes and he opens his mouth to inform her that she's lucky he's even implying he'll return it to her when she slaps him again, turns on her heel and vanishes out the door.

Regina, the woman always game for a tantrum, leaving quietly.

Regina's not a child anymore. She grew up to hate her mother and loathe her past and the last return he expected from her was one that was genuine.

Belle looks at him in frustration, which only nags at him further. He'd already come up with a response and amends for Belle's anger, but instead there is only a disappointed scorn.

He gives Belle a cocky grin and innocent shrug and feels like he's back in the Enchanted Forest with a twenty-something Regina betrayed he'd crossed the invisible line they always had between them.

* * *

TV, stereo, DVD, computers and Belle's so interested in his 'pathetically small' literary collection.

She'd never make it in the 21st century.

He wonders what she'd think of books on tape.

Sacrilegious.

What an interesting oversight, failing to overcompensate with a book collection.

Belle doesn't ask about the necklace. The only thing of importance is the end result and her never ending disappointment in the pair of them. She sits quietly on the floor, her long skirt pooling around her like a picnic blanket to rest her chosen books upon.

Even Belle's clothes are more conducive to organization than Regina's best efforts.

There are dozens of comfortable places to sit, with a minimum effort of relocating research, but she's chosen the floor.

Ridiculous.

"What are doing?"

"Protecting you."

If she backs up those words with chain male and swords he will forgive, always forgive, the inevitable future 'can't we all just get along's.

"From the Wicked Witch, I presume?"

It's a hard title to argue against. Both descriptions are, after all, hard fact.

Belle gives it a shot, "Or Saint Mills, if we compare."

Tch. "Then we won't."

"Ah." She smiles brightly, "What would I do with a saint, anyways?"

He doesn't say 'live happily ever after,' but only because he doesn't want to be predictable.

He doesn't say anything at all because he can see only two reasons she'd make the comment:

Appeasing his possible, probable, insecurities on the matter (for _shouldn't_ she have a Prince Charming of her own and not be part of villains' sandwich?) or fearing their catty disrespect is rubbing off on her.

Belle says, "Can I ask a favor from you?"

"Yes. You might have better luck asking for a deal, however."

"Do I have anything to make a deal with?"

"No," he says, "Not especially. What would you ask for?"

"Your specialty: the impossible."

He sits up, intrigued.

"Go and make amends."

He slouches down, uninterested.

"At last!" Belle says, "Something that hasn't changed."

Rumplestiltskin says, "I promise you, I've made many deals that have been distasteful, dearie."

"Well, at this rate you're going to kill each other and then where will I be?"

He scoffs, but even as he opens his mouth to inform her he could quite easily take down Regina, long before any killing blows, he realizes that's the sort of theme deemed 'asking for it' and 'sleeping on the couch.'

Instead he goes with, "New evil sorcerers would take our places. You're quite fond of those. No, don't deny it, dearie."

She doesn't, shaking her head at his teasing.

It's tricky to pin down just what Regina is to Belle; captor, acquaintance friend or... There will be unhappiness when she dies.

He worries on the duration.

"You're not 'evil.' Don't say that."

Rumplestiltskin says, "You get all," he gestures in a discombobulated sort of way, "cranky when I say 'monster.'"

Belle's eyes light with a mischief that almost, but not quite, suits her, "Your computer has a feature on it you might like, then. 'Thesaurus'? It offers suggestions for words that are similar but not so offensive."

It's hard to choose which should amused him most; having a thesaurus explained to him or being asked to find new words for her to disapprove of.

"The Queen," he says, with absolute certainty, "does not deserve you."

"Funny. She says the same thing about you."

Yes, yes, he set himself up for that one.

Then she backtracks. Again. "Hey now, how many girls would love to have Rumplestiltskin fulfilling their every whim?"

More soothing corrections of mocking comments. It doesn't matter to her if they sting a nerve or hit a mark. She changes her story when she recalls that she should care.

It's unnecessary and he will have to comment on this misplaced wish-there-was-guilt. He hates a self-imposed burden being placed on her shoulders for his sake.

Belle smiles when he doesn't reply, "Tell you what, hmm? I'll give you my first born."

Belle and Bae and baby makes three.

The Happily Ever After people strive for.

Still, he's sure he can get her first (second and third) born at a discounted price. Belle comes from a place, a time, where women are raised to provide such things without complaint.

So very many things to say that will result in a minimum twenty-four hours of glares and silence and, oh yes, groveling for forgiveness.

"You will have better luck appealing to her Majesty." And he does believe this. Regina is far more eager to display her need for acceptance and appreciation than he ever will be.

Belle's raised eyebrow informs him that she's exhausted this stratagem already and his intrigue is piqued once more.

"Ooh," he says, leaning forward, "Tell me."

Belle stands then and goes to his chair. She leans in close, uncomfortably close, and why are all these women stealing his tricks?

She, like Regina, adds her own bit of self to soothe the plagiarism: she smells like Belle, feels like Belle and sounds like Belle.

It's an excellent deviation from the classic.

Belle leans down and he carefully doesn't back away when her hands grip the sofa behind him, pinning him in place with her hands above his shoulders.

She has a sneaky and predatory look that, on Regina, would be brilliantly tantalizing and enticing in its dominating fashion. Regina is built for this, this vicious seduction. Belle is not. It is out of place and it unnerves him to see it draped and coiled around her.

Had she been drinking this lack of inhibition would be delightfully endearing, and he'd be oh so eager to accept the actions of a Belle without modesty or manners or cares. Free of propriety, at ease with his discomfort, direct and dominating...

That's all well and good and fun and free, but it is not Belle. She would never do this, never look like this, if she was whole with her emotions and logic and heart.

She wouldn't.

He tries to focus on the here and now. This nervousness does not become him.

Belle's looking at him with uncertainty skipping across her features; trying to be vanquished and hoping it needn't be.

He hates to make her self-conscious or embarrassed and so he places his hands on her hips and tilts his head back to stare up at her with submissively innocent eyes.

She says, "It's a secret." Her tone steady now that he's playing her uncomfortably provocative game.

"Tell me?"

"It's _my_ secret." Regina has poisoned her. That's a fact, a glaring and deep rooted fact.

It makes it tricky because he's not sure he should look beyond Regina's influences and manipulations or accept them as a part of who Belle is now, of what she's grown to be.

There isn't going to be a radical different to her when her heart is back in her possession. But it is overwhelming to _him_ to see her pretending that she's okay with this moment, to see her pretending she loves him when their eyes are so close and their noses are touching.

She's so very, very empty inside.

And then she's crawling into his lap, her knees on either side of him and it's too much. She's hit his breaking point.

He grabs her about the waist and twists her around. She bounces when he tosses her on the sofa and her eyes are bright when she realizes he's switched their positions.

This works. This _makes sense_. He's the insolent troublesome one who delights in menacing.

Pinning Belle down, with her eyes electrified and laughing, doesn't remind him of everything he stands to lose if Regina becomes disappointed in him.

"Ah," he says, "Now you must tell me."

"And I will if you-"

He interrupts, "There are easier ways to extract secrets, dearie."

"Don't I know it."

_'He locked her in a tower and sent in clerics to cleanse her soul...'_

It's Regina twisting her talons in him and getting into his head.

He anticipates, at all times, for Regina to be a reckless bitch and it's clearly a throwaway and flighty comment with Belle's intonation. A flirty nothingness.

He has got to stop letting Regina manipulate him.

Belle misinterprets his silent tension, "I won't..." he realizes, now, that her eyes are scanning his face, flicking back and forth from his eyes to his lips and _of all the times_ for this to come up again.

"I won't kiss you," she promises, "I'll always wait for you," like he's a blushing virgin, nervous about their first time.

Years and years of fantasy feels like he's already taken things excruciatingly slow.

He nods, says something that might be 'thanks' or might be a miserable sound of cynicism, and pushes himself away from her.

"But you really ought to make amends. Just apologize. An apology from _you_," she makes an all-encompassing gesture that somehow feels insulting, "will go further than you think, Rumple."

Oh, thank god. An easy out.

He glances sharply at her and Belle says, "...stiltskin."

Of all the people to complain about taking liberties with a name... It only matters in so much as the only living person who uses the nickname does so as a derisive insult and that just so happens to be the woman Belle's learned it from.

He waves it off and waves her comment off while he's at it, "I'll think about it." Belle scoffs and he promises, "I will."

* * *

Regina's in the shower when her phone rings.

Caller ID informs him it's Emma Swan.

He can think of a few reasons she might call; checking on Regina's wellbeing (for she is the Savior, a white hat and sheriff) or offering to get drinks with dear old granny and talk of times she's missed (for Emma's always had a venomous streak inside her) but one stands out, clear and most likely:

Henry.

He wonders if Henry will still call out for the woman who ran to his side for ten years every time he hurt or cried or needed absolutely anything at all.

Probably.

Old habits die hard.

He wonders if it will break Emma's heart when he comes down with a cold or has a nightmare and instinct tells him Regina will soothe him.

Clever and brave as Henry is, he's still a child.

Malicious and calculating as Regina is, she's also a mother.

She's always been a mother, point in fact, and she's always understood the importance of the role.

Rumplestiltskin knows, before Regina's unhappy marriage became too much for her to endure, before she crashed down a kingdom and became _obsessed_, that she did try. Try, because Snow White idolized her. She loved her above all other women and saw nothing but perfection when she looked into Regina's eyes.

For all that she tried not to care, there's a reason Regina's fanatical vengeance didn't emerge until Snow was in her twenties.

* * *

_Snow White is thirteen when she's bedridden for a week and her fever's escalating. Word on the vine is she won't last a fortnight. _

_Regina's standing in his entryway wearing a purple thing that looks unimpressed with the fact women need to breathe and appears thirty pounds in weight._

_Must be how royalty stays fit._

_"Come for a cure, then? It'll cost you."_

_He waits for her scorn. Her anger. Her desperation._

_Her only child is on the brink of death and Regina says, "Don't be tiresome."_

_Hmm, "You're a monster, aren't you, dearie?"_

_"And you're a man."_

_Role reversal._

_Trading places and Regina looks so very disappointed. She doesn't like that he has morals lurking beneath his scales. "Don't go soft on me now." _

_He says, "That's not how it works."_

_She waves her hand dismissively, "I'm not in the mood."_

_Rumplestiltskin puts his hand over his heart like she could not possibly have insulted him more, "Aren't we cranky today." But he still waves her irritable self inside, "Come in, come in. You'll catch your death standing there."_

_She sweeps into his house and he sees she's come alone. So. She's mastered teleportation. _

_He looks her over and what he sees amuses him; she's uptight because she's exhausted and she's exhausted because she's troubled and she's troubled because..._

_He smirks. She's going to ask for the cure._

_Faux sociopaths are the worst_

_Rumplestiltskin wonders what it feels like to feign indifference for your own child's welfare but Regina doesn't look like her skin is crawling and that would've been his first guess._

_Curious._

_She walks around his things, different than before because he's grown bored looking at king-making swords and magical axes. He half wants her to touch the dragon's tooth to teach her a lesson about poking beautiful things when you don't know their history; they might just bite._

_It's the one thing she doesn't touch._

_"It's quiet, Rumplestiltskin. What happened to your maids?"_

_Maid. _

_"There was a better price for her return."_

_She flinched too much. Cowered too often. Stuttered and bowed and sniffled and she had to go._

_Regina seems to believe this a request for company because she sits._

_He supposes a woman surrounded by dozens of people dedicated to her welfare and happiness would assume him lonely without even one._

_"Come to take her place, then?" he stands behind her chair, propping his elbows on the back and leaning heavily over it, "Well, well, well. What can you do, dearie?" he asks as way to conduct the interview, "Cook?" he waves a hand by her head, "scrub?" and over her head, "launder?" and in front of her face when she fails to amuse him with even a snort. _

_"Can you say, 'yes, master. As you wish'?"_

_Regina leans back and tilts her head until she's looking up at him, "'Forgive me, my Queen, for I mean no disrespect'?"_

_He smirks. "Something tells me you're not overly qualified."_

_And she'd probably cost too much in the long run._

_Medium run._

_Short run._

_There's every indication she's going to be pricey tonight._

_She has a solemn thoughtful look about her, so he conjures tea. If her mouth is full she won't be able to bust out a heartfelt conversational dialogue._

_"Tell me why you've come, dearie. What are you hoping for?"_

_No one comes to him without a deal in mind..._

_She sighs like he's so very pointless. _

_He does hope she hasn't come here to sit in miserable silence and darken his day._

_"There's always something else." Perhaps Snow is the end all be all of the Summer Palace, but not here._

_Regina smirks at him._

_She always likes his games._

_Rumplestiltskin sulks. Dramatically. "Then I'll guess, hmm?" He begins a theatric pace around the table. "I think I can." He taps his fingers along the table as he crosses it, "You have fame. Family."_

_She closes her eyes. 'Don't remind me.'_

_Of course, that. He knows Cora._

_"It's so obvious," he tells her, "You wear your desires on your sleeve."_

_She looks at him in surprise._

_"You wear it well?" He offers._

_She's a passable witch, certainly someone a man on the street should not like to cross, but Regina is not powerful. _

_And why should she bother with it all, when she knows him._

_When she _knows_ him._

_Rumplestiltskin leans in close and draws out the whispered word, "Power."_

_He can give her magic in a bottle. Skip right on over the training and take the easy road._

_He's obliged to make a deal._

_Regina says, "It wouldn't make her happy."_

_It's his turn to be surprised, though he hides the expression far better. There's only one person she could possibly be speaking of and he cannot imagine why Regina would give a damn for Cora's misery or happiness. _

_"But you?"_

_"What's your price?" She asks._

_Regina looks deflated. She looks resigned and broken down and she looks like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders._

_No one gives him those expressions when he offers them power._

_He shakes his head that she can look disgraced and shamed for admitting her daughter's life means something to her._

_He would do anything, give anything, beg or grovel or die, to be in her position. To have someone who could snap their fingers and save his son._

_"Hmm? For what?" He wants to hear her say it. To admit that she's not a soulless cutthroat._

_Her lips purse._

_He laughs._

_"She deserves death."_

_"Why is that?"_

_Regina's silent and that wounds, truly, completely, so much so he has to smile._

_He waits her out._

_"She's a murderess."_

_He did not see that coming._

_"And you aren't?"_

_"What's your price?"_

_"I don't know," he shrugs, "The King's sword?"_

_Her lips gave him a shocked, "What?" and her eyes gave him a bored, 'sure, why not?'_

_So much ennui is his usually fine actress._

_"And!" Rumplestiltskin beams because he's him, and leans down low over her, "...I've never had royalty in my bed before."_

_Snow White will not die tonight and this conflicted and resentful Queen will not be resting in the Summer Palace._

_Not for this._

_"I'm not tired."_

_"Terms of the deal," he says, producing a parchment with the recipe to save dear Snow's life. _

_He dangles it in front of her and Regina looks up at the ceiling like he's affronting her._

_Seconds tick by and he cocks his head to the side curiously. It's when he starts to pull away, to call the deal off in as many overindulging words as possible, that she reaches out._

_Regina curls her fingers around the page, looking weighed down and heavy. She holds it like it's something precious and priceless. She holds it as a mother should._

_"The fairest of them all," he says "deserves to die, then?"_

_There's little hesitation, "Yes." Little, but it's there._

_Regina stands up and sweeps her hands in acquiescent gesture to allow him to lead the way to his room. _

_She trusts him._

_It could be because of Cora. Perhaps he's enough like her wickedly powerful mother that he's familiar but comfortable to be around because he's not abusive._

_Or perhaps King Leopold. _

_No one's made it a secret that Regina exists in the Summer Palace for Snow's benefit, but Regina's still a wife and a Queen. She wasn't hired on as an au pair. What might that doting father get up to, to make her so unhappy..._

_But Regina doesn't treat Rumplestiltskin as an authority figure she needs or wants to please. _

_Ah, well._

_Rumplestiltskin doesn't feel he's bouncing off the walls with his limitless energy but Regina still can't manage to keep up._

_He slows down for her and it nags at him that he must. Perhaps she'll be better company after a lie in._

_At the door to his room she enters easily, sweeping through like it's always belonged to her. _

_What she gets out of King Leopold is the conditional presence of a daughter._

_What she gets out of Cora is the conditional presence of a mother._

_Which begs the question, "What do you get out of this," he says, gesturing a wide, all-encompassing gesture, 'my Queen'?"_

_She stops to look over the threshold at him, that invisible line that she trusts him not to cross._

_"A flattering wardrobe."_

_"What?" _

_Regina turns her back to him. She runs her fingers along the comforter of his bed before reclining down. "I'm too young to be dressed for mourning." _

_He doesn't think she's purposefully misunderstood. He thinks her mind is so full of Snow White that everything else is discarded as unessential._

_"Really?" he muses, "I think you'd look quite fetching in-"_

_In a cloud of black, Regina is gone._

_Rumplestiltskin blinks, staring in surprise at the empty room._

'I've never had royalty in my bed before.'

_He... probably had that coming._

_Well, well, well._

_Trust is overrated._

Rumplestiltskin slams the edge of his book against the phone three times. It makes a mangled, broken, final attempt at sound so he does it again.

He was asked to protect Regina, to the best of his abilities, and Miss Swan certainly constitutes a threat.

Regina bent over backwards for young Snow White and Henry's the one she _actually_ likes. There'd be no hesitation, no edging around what must be done. Regina would run to his side and to hell with the consequences.

Her son is not here because Regina can love and sacrifice.

Snow White's daughter is alive because she can appreciate and understand.

But that doesn't make up half of the true Regina.

* * *

The History Channel is playing in the living room. Again. It's better than listening to the Food Network, but Rumplestiltskin rather suspects it's only a matter of time before Belle finds the station.

She's watching a documentary on the invention of the steam engine, which might turn out to be useful for her, but he doubts it.

It's half necessity, a bit of boredom and a lot of infatuation that has him sneaking up behind her.

Rumplestiltskin is very good at sly; at devious. Quiet and unexpected when he wants to be. Showing up out of the blue and none the wiser until he chooses to show himself.

Or he likes to think he is.

He expects a startled and grumbling 'ouch' from Belle when he creeps up behind her and snags a strand of her hair. He doesn't expect her fingers to dart out, wrapping around his wrist so quickly that he hasn't a chance to get his prize to a safe distance.

"Explain." She doesn't even look away from the television.

He can see his reflection in the corners of the shine on the polished black frame work around the screen.

Clever.

"I thought you might like to contribute to the madness that is her Majesty's obsession."

"And you need my hair."

"Yes."

"_My_ hair?"

"No, not _yours_. Human though and you're the only one that qualifies." He says it lightly, in a flighty sort of voice that she cannot take offense to for its innocent teasing.

She snaps her fingers, holding her palm up. "Give it."

"Why's that, dearie? It's ruined for you and useful to me."

Belle turns around then. She turns around and she looks _murderous_. He does not like being on the receiving end of that expression. "You promised." She enunciates the words with a darkness she never had before she came to know him. Before Regina.

Oh, and yes, he did no such thing.

And even if he had, "You're overreacting."

"No. No, I'm not."

Well, this has come out of nowhere. This dramatic hostility and overbearing anger is insanely left-field and, "It's just hair."

"It's not always hair."

Oh.

Yes, he recalls something about that. It's certainly unexpected that _hair's_ a trigger for a long ago exploitation.

It's unexpected she's even bothered still about it.

"That's not fair." Rumplestiltskin says, the words sounding like a question.

"It's entirely fair. There's no overreacting when the most powerful man in the world wants something from you."

That's an exaggeration.

"Because you can't say no."

Over. Reacting.

* * *

_Rumplestiltskin puts his hands over Belle's eyes, forcing her to close them, and spins her around in a circle._

_When he lets her open them they're no longer in the dining room but transported directly into a new room, a bedroom._

_Belle figures it out instantly when he was, perhaps, hoping for a moment of confusion and some mustache twirling on his part._

_She laughs and beams smugly at him, "I knew you didn't intend to keep me down there!"_

_He looks at her with great childish innocence. No, making her live in a dungeon hadn't been the overall plain, but he did keep her there for three days._

_He rather hoped she did think that._

_" ...What's the catch?"_

_His jaw drops in wounded distress, "Must there be a catch?"_

_She looks suspicious but it seems more a caricature than true disbelief. _

_He watches her do a circuit around the room, "Does it meet the princess's standards?"_

_"Well, anything's nicer than stone and straw," she teases._

_He giggles. Yes, naturally._

_She comes to stand beside him once more and for a moment he thinks she's going to reach out and touch him. That would be convenient._

_She doesn't, however, so he reaches down to her hand, resting at her side, and stabs a pin through it._

_Well. Pricks her finger just the same._

_"Ouch!"_

_She instinctively yanks her hand back, closer to herself. "Clumsy?" he offers with a laugh. _

_The wound isn't deep and it isn't large but she was startled, even if the sting was mild, so he puts up with her look of suffering._

_He takes her hand, despite her efforts to twist it away, and she looks at him with fantastically epic frustration. _

_He inspects the bleeding wound innocently enough and makes a sympathetic sound for her._

_She huffs._

_Belle tries to shake her hand free and his fingers tighten. "Rumplestiltskin, give me back my hand."_

_"I will." In a moment._

_He shifts his hold to grasp her bleeding finger, putting pressure on it to well up just a few more drops._

_Rumplestiltskin closes his free hand and when it opens a bottle grows out of it. "Voila," he says, though it's not one of his better tricks._

_Belle stares warily at the contents inside and then laughs a nervous laugh, hoping to make light of it, or have him make light of it. A joke not meant to be taken seriously._

_"There's the spirit!" he mocks to unnerve her._

_When he tips her finger over the bottle she grabs his wrist and tries to push him off and pull her hand free._

_All right, perhaps it was harsh to mock her. She's such a level headed thing he didn't think it would panic her. He didn't expect a fight over it._

_Doesn't matter. Too late. He lets go when the blood drops inside and she cradles her hand to her chest, holding it close._

_"What... was that about?" _

_"Aren't you a maiden innocent of all wrong doings?"_

_"You could have _asked!_"_

_He giggles, "Yes, yes. Too late now, dearie."_

_He holds the vial between them to show her 'no harm done.'_

_She leans in closer to look curiously at it, "What's it do?"_

_"Don't you worry your pretty little head about it."_

_He shakes the contents until the color changes, flecks of silver emerging from the base and coiling inside like writhing snakes. _

_And with them Belle sways unsteadily, tilting her head and looking, for a moment, quite vague. He checks her over in visual examination but she's exhibiting no unanticipated symptoms. Her eyes are glazing over, a little drugged. Her posture is wavering, a little drunk. Nothing harmful._

_He has no desire to cause harm to his shiny new bauble._

_"Yes, but what's it do?" Belle asks, holding up her fingers to inspect the still bleeding wound. She looks horrified over the small bit of red sliding down her finger so he reaches out for her, to help. It's the least he can do, fixing what he broke._

_Belle flinches and not slightly. It's a pointed movement that insists he keep his distance. But she's too lightheaded to pull it off and it nearly overbalances her._

_Rumplestiltskin catches her before she can bang herself up from a tumble._

_Three days ago her bravery had overruled her desire to pull away from him as he wrapped his arm around her waist and led her away from her world, from her loved ones. It doesn't extend here. She's tense all over and trying to shuffle herself away from him._

_He thinks she'll fall if he lets her go, even at her request, so he walks her back until her knees hit the mattress, nicer than stone, and assists her down._

_"It's for healing," he says, though the bottle looks more sinister than soothing._

_Most of his potions do._

_"Why does a _healing_ potion require me to get hurt?"_

_He smirks, believing her sardonic. "Lay down, dearie. You'll be right as rain in a couple hours."_

_It is, perhaps, not the best foundation for an inaugural slumber, but the sleep will be deep and restful and make up for it._

_Belle snaps, "_Tell me!_" with an energy that surprises him._

_She follows it up with a shuddering, nervous breath. She's frightened and he doesn't see why. He's here and it's his implied responsibility to protect her while she's under his roof._

_"I don't understand," she adds._

_"Yes, you do. 'All magic comes with a price.'"_

_"And I'm paying it?"_

_"Yes and no." _

_Her expression is profoundly disturbed and he wonders if perhaps he's throwing too much at her, too soon._

_Well, if she's going to go off and be a nuisance about it he'll return her. She's in 'Like New' condition, doesn't that mean 'no questions asked'? _

_"You're fretting, dearie. Don't. You're just tired." Her eyes are heavy lidded and she's going to have to relax and lay down or risk crashing in an uncomfortable mess on a perfectly designed bed._

_"Healing requires strength," he says, relenting and reminding her, "Just a drop of it," for that is all he's taken. _

_Her drugged body gives up on her and she's forced to slouch down until drooping to the covers. She shudders when he moves and he might be persuaded to pay workman's compensation._

_"Hush, then." He says, "You'll be fine." He crosses his heart, "Promise."_

_Rumplestiltskin leaves room while she's still aware enough to watch him go. He hates to leave her curled up and awkward but she'll appreciate it more to show he's not interested than if he planned to stick around and tuck her in while she's unconscious and unaware of his actions._

_Well, she'll be happy to know that she will be home in no time flat._

* * *

All right, yes, that was bad. But it's not the end of the story.

It's not the end of the story so he has no qualms saying, "Oh, I didn't hurt you."

"_I don't know that!_"

Don't.

"What?" he asks.

_Don't._

"You have no idea what that's like, Rumplestiltskin. And I'm glad. You shouldn't."

He does not like the implication of her words.

He can't think straight through the dismayed realization that this is something she hasn't let go of. "What do you mean 'don't'?"

Belle didn't _just_ confront him the next day, day bloody _four_, she went out of her way to set herself up for a death sentence. She purposefully lied, disobeyed, angered and manipulated him.

She stood across from him and got her way because she always, always, got what she wanted in the Dark Castle.

He knew she was angry, to be expected of course, but certainly not to a degree that she still held it against him.

It had seemed she instantly moved on.

* * *

_It's bright and early in the morning when they meet again in his tower, his mad scientist laboratory. He steps through the door and there she is, standing on the tips of her toes to look at the shelves too high up for her to snoop through._

_He stops, incredulous._

_He had explicitly told her he did not want her here and he can't imagine where she'd get off thinking she can cozy up with his precious, dangerous and hard won artifacts._

_He loathes that she couldn't last one week before betraying him. _

_Belle jumps, startled, when she realizes she isn't alone, "I'm sorry!" She doesn't look sorry. "Just, I couldn't find you."_

_"Oh, couldn't you?"_

_Of course she couldn't. He was hiding with his spinning wheel, in the main room, the one place he always gravitates towards. Why ever would she think to look _there?

_"Nope." Belle says cheerfully, "So, I thought I'd look here."_

_He scans the room, inspecting his more valuable and precarious items. He doesn't see anything broken, misplaced or stolen._

_"Don't worry," Belle soothes, "I didn't touch anything. I just looked."_

_He looks over at her, not amused. Belle says, "I made biscuits," _biscuits,_ "and tea,"_ tea.

_His teeth clench. _

_Belle raises her eyebrows, bright and blameless and looking for his approval._

_This passive aggressive retaliation is both hazardous to her health and very misplaced. She never once asked him not to use her as ingredients. This isn't 'making a point,' it's just another person complaining after the fact, as though it isn't their fault for overlooking the obvious._

_It's a dangerous game to play._

_It's an extraordinarily bad move to make._

_She stands next to him. Tiny, powerless, and daring him with her actions to do something about it._

_It's incredibly beguiling._

_She didn't just make him tea, either. She brought him the chipped cup._

_So very daring._

_"I really didn't touch anything. No harm meant." She crosses her heart like she can't wait to suffer, "You can trust me."_

_"Of course I can, dearie."_

_"I didn't think you'd mind. Just this once."_

_"Just this once, then."_

_She turns in a slow circle to look around the room, nods her head in wonderment and turns back to him._

_"I'd best be on my way, then. I hate to interrupt. I know you're a busy, busy man." She smiles brightly at him, like she respects his work ethic, and her expression doesn't even look fake. _

_He watches her go, shutting the door behind her without a backwards glance._

_The tea is cold and he wonders how long she was waiting here to put him in his place._

_Rumplestiltskin laughs. There's simply no other outlet for his opinion on the matter._

_He's keeping this one; Belle isn't going anywhere._

_He played hero, he saved hundreds of people, and in return he was given this little sheltered princess._

_Rumplestiltskin always gets the better end of all his deals._

* * *

Belle stands up and he knows, he just knows she's going to stomp off to Regina with their horrible 'understanding' and he's going to sleep on the floor for the rest of his life.

He bolts around the couch, catching her waist lightly, so lightly, and he's sure she's going to carry off on her way without even a shrug to dismiss him.

She says, "Let go of me."

He hardly has a restraining hold on her but he acquiesces just the same.

Doesn't love mean 'never having to say you're sorry'?

He supposes Belle's never seen that movie.

He watches her, waiting for her natural calm to return.

It doesn't.

"Belle..."

She holds up hand to silence him and then turns it palm up. This time he returns her hair, only to see her pull each end until it snaps.

She doesn't look at him as she turns and walks away.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

"Wherever I want."

Rumplestiltskin turns away for fear she's stomping off in Regina's direction. Best he not see because he knows he wouldn't be able to put up with that.

Anyone else, but not Regina. Not when he knows the horrors she inflicts on people, not when he's seen her sadistic glee as she does it.

Maybe Belle had some tough times with him but there doesn't exist a worse confidant than Regina Mills.

* * *

Belle drags him off to bed, later that night, in indirect forgiveness for their quarreling.

Belle said 'don't.' She spoke in the present tense. Rumplestiltskin isn't going to bring it up, not now that she once again wants to move on, but he can't decipher if it was said in anger or in truth.

She has a strand of hair, darker than her own, shorter, and she hands it over without complaint.

He can't see Regina's scales, so she's probably human enough.

Regina would know instantly the ingredient is benign for the fact that he went to Belle first. She knows he needs this ingredient _for_ her. It's only natural she would hand it over.

But there's an unspoken understanding in the gesture:

She's siding with him.

And she didn't just side with him at that; Regina made Belle the intermediary.

Whatever else the two might have talked about, Regina stood next to him; across from Belle.

Belle can't be swayed against her beliefs or values but the suggestion that Regina trusts and agrees with him can only work in his favor.

Rumplestiltskin's beginning to notice that the majority of Regina's actions do, in fact, work out in his favor.

* * *

He tells himself, at first, that he's only invited Regina along because he promised Belle he'd take her request to heart and he owes Belle so very much. He tells himself his actions are not to be mistaken for guilt.

Then decides that a lack of self-awareness leads only to oversights and inevitable failing and so he man's up to the fact that he has a conscience.

It's the necklace and the phone call. It's that Regina followed him and let Emma lead, for her son's safety. It's how beautiful Belle looks in the power suits and silk blouses Regina gave her and how Belle's nightmares stopped when Regina showed up.

It's the way Belle turns even the hardest of villains into knights in shining armor.

So now here he is, with a conscience and a glimmer of gratefulness, brewing spells with Regina.

Despite Disney's assertions the Evil Queen is, in fact, rubbish at potions.

It's not that she blows up cauldrons or turns people into accidental mice, no. Those are relatively easy brews that anyone with a cookbook can accomplish. Regina just lacks the delicacy and enduring patience needed to properly cook up a powerful brew.

Regina actually sets a timer.

They're not making cookies but that's okay. It doesn't matter. Some people have no intuition and work differently than him.

The timer falls into the sink.

Accidently.

"Rumplestiltskin, may I ask you a question?"

"Oh yes, dearie. Ask as many as possible."

She glowers and he laughs, waves his hand and says, "Go on, go on."

"Can you manufacture true love?"

"Can _I_?"

He hopes this isn't about her long ago fiancée. Rumors to the contrary, he cannot raise the dead.

He gestures to the ingredients with a look that informs her 'this is why you're intermediate at potions' She stirs counterclockwise and adds coal tar to the mix, "One person in all the world, worlds, in all of time itself, billions upon billions..."

An assembly line of people. Pick out the ripest one.

"What if you never, hmm," she tilts her head and considers him like the word is on the tip of her tongue but she just can't reach it.

"...Find?"

"Intersect with the person who will love you above all others."

Rumplestiltskin finds the answer easy enough, "You could try raising one." He giggles at his own little joke and Regina's smirk is a clear, 'touché.'

"What are you getting at?" he asks and because he's making such an effort to get along he doesn't see it coming.

"We meet a lot of people every day, dozens, hundreds, coming and going. There's a buffet of choices." Regina didn't get the 'cease fire' memo. "How many people are in your world, Rumplestiltskin?"

It's too late to cut this off at the source, so he tries distraction on for size, "You've forgotten the sweetbreads."

She adds them, "How many do you meet each day?"

Belle lived in a world of two.

"Your Majesty..."

"Far be it from me to question your love life, but haven't you wondered?"

Of course he has.

"_Regina._" He uses her name because it's always a harbinger, Rumplestiltskin using proper names, but he stops there.

Regina isn't smiling but her eyes are alight with triumph.

Rumplestiltskin could retaliate now, 'oh won't you please pour this boiling potion over your head' or wait for something more profound to assert itself, something less physical and richly cutting. And he wants to, _he wants to._

But he knows this has to end. They can't keep awaiting the next line of attack.

The price of the necklace jibe, "Yes." He doesn't owe her more than that, but, yes.

He's questioned every particle of Belle's existence twice over.

The admittance mollifies her, but doesn't shut her up, "There's a name for your relationship."

Deep. Calming. Breaths. "Is there?"

"Oh yes." She moves back from him, to the other side of the stove. This can lead nowhere good. "Stockholm Syndrome."

Wise of her to put distance between them.

"This conversation is over." He hisses despite his ever loving want to come across flighty and bored.

Regina says, "And when she realizes it, she's going to look at what you've done and what you haven't done-"

Rumplestiltskin sings, "Please, please, please..."

There's no real command there, nothing offered for what he's demanding. All he really wants is the threat laid out between them.

Regina points her finger at him, eyebrows raised and looking for all the world as though _he's_ the one making a mistake not letting her judge and ridicule his relationships.

He considers requesting that she please stop looking smug.

"You're right, of course." She says, "Silly of me to presume you're not three steps ahead of the game."

"There's no game, dearie."

"Love is always a game."

It's the first time she's acknowledged it, verbally. All things said, it's nice not to see a derisive smirk on her lips as she does.

It boggles the mind that Regina would consider herself adept at anything of the nature.

...It boggles the mind that he should think she isn't. Love is _the_ game Regina plays.

But he doesn't want to manipulate Belle.

Regina shrugs and says, "Cave."

"Cave?"

She could not possibly exude 'amateur' more if she tried. "To everything she wants," Regina draws out the words, enunciating each one with a relish. He hates when she does that.

He glares at her dispensing relationship advice when he's given Belle absolutely everything she's requested-

Ah.

Well then. What is this, hmm? He doesn't like Belle confiding in her, like Regina's a substitute for her long gone mother, there to impart the wisdom age brings.

Of course he sees what Belle finds so appealing about the Queen. He knows all the charms of Regina, the manufactured and the authentic, and she possesses all the qualifications necessary for a girl like Belle to offer a hand in friendship to.

Regina is someone who needs to be saved from herself.

Unfortunately, an obligatory component for redemption is the aspiration for it.

But he's sure Regina's grateful for the ammunition. It will fit snugly into the quality 'I hate Rumplestiltskin' time she schedules into her day.

In a simpering voice Regina asks, "Did I traumatize you? Is that where this drama is coming from?" Admittedly Regina, or rather her deceptions, does have a thing or two to do with it. "Oh, you're not going to let little ol'me stand in your way, are you Rumple?"

"Little ol'you, dearie? Perish the thought. I daresay no one has ever been as invested in my happiness as you, your Majesty."

"I'm glad you see it that way."

"Of course. That's what makes our bond so strong. We look out for each other, you and I." He smiles with teeth and she flashes her fangs as well.

Regina has no instinct for potions, no years of training ingrained into her to recognize the subtleties of a simmering pot, the changing consistency or the delicate tinting shades of color it turns when properly brewing.

She has none and she steals his when she says, "Tell me then, given our close acquaintance, is it nerves, dear?"

"What?"

There's mischief in her eyes where malevolence had been. A playful turn of her lips vanquishing the ridicule, "It's okay. It's been, what? A few decades and then some." Or a century. Whichever. "Are you out of practice? Do you need a tune up?"

A pop, sizzle and burn and he barely registers what instinct is telling him to prepare for before he's banged back against the counter top, the edge cutting painfully into his side. There's a boiling stew of harmful magics he's not _quite_ quick enough to stop from splashing him.

Well.

That's a bit of a lie.

Rather, he would have been quick enough if the explosion hadn't knocked Regina onto the floor. It was equal parts surprise and proximity that made her overbalance, but fall she did and right beneath the firework storm.

Regina's life is more precious than his own. It's one of the perks you get when holding aces; her perfectly unmarred body and his broiling burns.

Regina curses, the smoke alarms go off and he blinks something that might be vision back into his eyes.

He hisses at the horrible green blisters on his arm and looks sharply at Regina when she laughs.

Apparently it's not at his expense because her eyes are trained on the ceiling.

Regina says, "Or you could have said 'shut up.'"

Rumplestiltskin gasps in play pretend shock, "Am _I_ getting blamed for this?"

They both read the instructions.

Regina takes a deep breath and smugly admits, "No."

He rather likes her on the ground, at his feet, but he reaches down anyways and says, "Come back, get up here."

She takes his hands and pulls, much harder than he thinks necessary, herself up.

He hears Belle screaming, "Are you okay?" from a distance and then her frantic steps thudding down the stairs.

Rumplestiltskin makes a sweeping gesture at the mess they've made of the kitchen and the fog of smoke dissipates and liquid evaporates.

Regina's fingers curl around his arm and he detests the feel of her magic inside of him, stitching up wounds and making him cringe.

There are holes burned into her blazer and she shrugs it off. He rolls his eyes that Regina cares so very much about appearances.

She turns to the kitchen entrance as Belle comes skidding into it, grabbing the wall to stop her momentum, "Is everyone okay?"

"Mmm," Regina says, "Your boyfriend is not so skilled as he pretends."

_Boyfriend._

...Not so skilled? "All's well, dearie. Her Majesty is as easily distracted as a cat with string."

Belle smirks at their playground insults. It's as good as she's going to get for all her longing that they get along.

Rumplestiltskin feels this is a bit like the rhythm he once had with Regina; able to work together and not become a tangle of limbs reaching for the same items or bumping into each other as they walk around.

Belle's beaming cheer says she knows.


	3. Magic

**Chapter 3**

**Magic**

* * *

The crisis in the kitchen sparks something in Belle.

She's supposed to be in the office, translating essays (because 'translating' sounds much kinder, though less apt, than 'banished') and while he wouldn't go so far as to say they were punishing her with busy work, if she's smart she'll think twice before interrupting them again. The parlor tricks of youth and the distinction between them and _actual_ power was an imperative discussion he needed to have with Regina, and no one cared for Belle interjecting her thoughts.

But, now, a tray is being shoved at him and he jerks back before being jabbed with the silver platter.

He looks up to see Belle, tray of sandwiches in one hand, book in the other.

He tsks her for the accident but she's not paying attention to him, instead frowning down at the book. "Is it pronounced 'Kin-ale-door-ache-the?'"

Rumplestiltskin looks across the room at Regina; she's holding a sandwich and a drink and looks like she's not sure what to do with either.

He empathizes with her mystified expression.

Rumplestiltskin looks back at Belle, his eyes slowly travelling up.

Ah, she brought him a drink too, balanced on a second tray atop her head.

He remembers her learning that trick.

"...No," he says, reaching up for the cup.

"How then?"

The Queen says, "Ken-all-thor-ache-the."

"Ah." Belle sits down in a chair, arranging herself and flipping open a notebook.

This will lead nowhere good. He can tell.

Regina asks him, "Why can't you be so useful?" and Rumplestiltskin doesn't reply.

It might just be a fair question.

* * *

Rumplestiltskin's given up caring when he can't find Regina or Belle.

Belle can go wherever she likes with whomever she likes. It's about time she not have a captor, dictating her comings and goings and laying out restrictions.

It's not fair, not fair at all, nor healthy that he should be a suffocating and overprotective presence, needing to always know the minute details of her life.

With that in mind he covers the mirrors to avoid temptation.

It feels a bit like being rewarded when he's lying next to Belle in bed, resting his weight half on top of her while she reads and doesn't mind.

He's been desperately wishing for his spinning wheel, probably as much as Regina's been craving her tree, but this is good too. Belle strokes her fingers through his hair and he can't remember at all why he's under pressure or should be worrying.

Free of stress he doesn't even find it frustrating that Belle's asking mind numbingly obvious questions in her crusade to become a sorcerer.

Privately he's termed it 'common sense 101,' but he's aware her queries are only tedious to him from his years of experience.

"What's hemolymph?" she asks. "Why is it 'one of the most necessary ingredients on your shelf'?"

"It's not," he says, "what drivel are you reading?"

"Rumplestiltskin."

"You don't believe me?"

"_Rumplestiltskin_."

"It's blood," he relents, "the blood in spiders, snails, beetles..." He wants to gesture, listing off, "flies, shrimps, grasshoppers..." It's a shade close to painful not to, but he doesn't want to disturb their lovely position. "Crabs, clams-"

"Very well," Belle interrupts, pauses and says, "and that sounds important."

"How morbid you are, my love. Going straight to the bloody dark spells."

He licks his lips, waiting. He's always throwing out innocent pet names, many frequently do add such decorations to their sentences; pet, dearie, dear, sweetie. He's even called her 'love' in the past.

But never when he's been _in_ love with her.

He's been waiting, calculating, considering, trying to find a quiet and peaceful time to try it on for size.

Belle doesn't notice.

His pet names are white noise.

She turns the page in her book and he shrugs it off. Not noticing is, after all, better than shock. "There are more important things you should be learning."

"I want to learn this."

"You don't yet know traffic lights, ambulances, cameras, elevators..."

"Do I need to?"

"Yes, dearie," he says. "Yes."

Belle puts her book down. "All right." She jostles him as she tries to rise up. "If you say so. I'll read up on the laptop." With her hands on his shoulders she urges him away. "Move."

He pushes her back down. "Not important."

She laughs, "Thought not."

He threads his fingers through hers and kisses her hand.

Belle's fingers are back in his hair and it's perfect, this is _perfect_. Comfortable and undemanding. There's no one else in the universe he could be so at ease with, cozy and smitten. There's no one else who could make him forget there are cares in the world.

He turns their hands to lay them back to the bed when a glimmer of light catches a shine on her wrist.

Curious, he pushes her sleeve up, seeing a thin band of gold before Belle shakes him off in favor of her book.

_This_ from the girl who harasses him about kissing?

"What's that?" he asks.

"Hmm?"

"Around your wrist."

"Oh." She shimmies the jewelry down and unties it for him. "Just some thread."

It pools in his hand when she lays it on his palm. Of course he recognizes it instantly, he's played with golden straw his entire life.

"It's mine," he says, and Belle smiles. "Where'd you get it?" He likes the image in his head of her stealing things from his shop as a souvenir for having survived the day long drama between himself and Regina.

But Belle's words turn slow and her shrug is cautious, "I don't know."

Ah.

Well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't even feel like's there's ill intent for Regina to give her such a thing and Belle wouldn't wrap it around her wrist if she thought otherwise.

When he shifts to place it back on her Belle grins, like she's terribly grateful there will be no bickering, and takes it from him instead. "Are you hungry?" she asks.

She moves him away, a sturdy and firm motion and it feels adamant enough that he lets her go. She stretches out to lay the golden cord on the nightstand.

"No," he says.

"Are you lying?"

Ngh. "Stop being a caretaker."

"Start using your magic to be productive."

Productive?

He magics the makeshift bracelet back snugly around her wrist as a display of helpfulness and Belle finishes, "And not tricks."

"Stay," he says, catching her arm. "Stay and I'll teach you to turn out the lights with a flick of your wrist."

"Does that involve throwing things at the light switches?"

"It does now, dearie."

"Soup sounds delicious."

He rolls onto his back and gives up.

As Belle opens the door she turns back and lightly says, "And I do know what traffic lights are."

"Oh?" Kudos?

"Yes. I had to walk to your shop, after Jefferson released me."

The name clicks. "_Jefferson?"_

"You know him?"

"Don't suppose I do." Though he knows of his exploits with the Queen. Crazy kids, those two. "But, the name rings a bell."

"I was walking to find you and someone told me."

Flatly he says, "You almost got run over, didn't you?"

Not the best way to prove she isn't so ignorant but Belle smiles like that's not the point at all. "And I know how to use a stove. Maybe we could all eat together in the kitchen?"

What an excellent way to ruin the day.

Belle says, "You can do that much, for me."

He stares at her in dismay.

She cannot possibly have just said that.

"You'll be a dark sorceress yet, Belle." She beams at him. "Cold. Wicked. Cruel." Belle giggles so he says, "No, no, don't laugh. They'll sing songs of your terrible deeds; the atrocities you inflict upon the innocent!"

Belle says, "An hour? I'll have dinner ready in an hour."

He flicks his wrist, the lights go out, Belle laughs as she walks down the hallway.

He liked her better when she traded smiles for friends and not dinners with foes.

* * *

_Four letters in four weeks._

_Belle's dear Papa sends one, every Sunday like clockwork, for his dearly departed daughter._

_For why not think of it that way? Belle dead in the frosted mountains of his home, forever out of reach in his mysterious lands. Only the tortured souls, braving cliffs and fields and Dark Ones, find their way inside._

_And rarely leaving in one piece._

_Metaphorically speaking._

_Ah, well. Perhaps that's why. Praying with letters to hear she's not been cast down to hell._

_Maurice has never received a reply. _

_His persistent mail gathers dust in Rumplestiltskin's closet because he doesn't like the idea of Belle suffering the reminders of all she's lost and never will have again._

_It's pouring salt into wounds and he likes to think he's better than that._

_The fifth letter arrives with a white dove and Rumplestiltskin has the patience of a saint, but this is itching on his last nerve. _

_He doesn't read the letters because he knows what desperation sounds like and it's never much different when written; the tremor of a begging voice will shake the pen, bleed the ink and break her heart._

_Belle doesn't need that, not when he's already aware she hides away homesick tears more often than he'd like. A weekly pen pal souvenir to store away with her already meager possessions will strengthen that grief, draw it out and make him feel like the bad guy. _

_And he doesn't need that any more than she does. These implications that he's the wicked one for saving hundreds of people at the cost of one. _

_He wants her to stop and he wants the letters to stop because he is not the ruthless one, not this time. He's the... He's the antihero._

_He's doing Belle a service._

_And then the sixth letter arrives, ruining an otherwise lovely day, and he knocks on the door to her room. "Belle?" It feels odd asking for permission when it's his door and his room and his house but not quite as odd as Belle's voice calling out, "Wait! Don't come in!"_

_He's tempted to, just for that._

_A minute later, when a flushed and dripping Belle slants open the door, he's grateful he didn't give into the temptation. "You're wet."_

"_I was in the bath."_

_He doesn't like that he likes envisioning this._

_She's always so distracting._

_Rumplestiltskin pushes the door open wider and leans in past her, "I like what you've done with the place," he says in response to the sterile nothingness of the room._

"_Why thank you," Belle says, bending back and away from him. "Did you want to come in?"_

_Maidens inviting sinister men into their bedchambers rarely ends well in his experience, and his sweeping entrance over the threshold signifies as much._

_He catches Belle rolling her eyes with a curious twitch on her lips as she turns away to sit upon the bed, combing her fingers through her damp hair. _

"_Are you bored?" she asks, because it wouldn't be the first time he's pestered her when he couldn't think of anything productive to do._

"_No. Not yet, no. I want to make a deal."_

_She tilts her head to the side to signify she's listening, but doesn't reply._

"_With you."_

_Belle blinks. "With me?" Her surprise doesn't last long, replaced instead by intrigue. "For what?"_

_Now you see it, now you don't, he conjures her father's letters with a twist of his wrist and fans them in his hand like an ace high royal flush._

_And always that cheating card up his sleeve._

_It takes Belle a moment to recognize her father's seal on the envelopes and once she does she inhales, sharp and deep and he's surprised she's not coughing at the speed of it. She stops herself half way in a mad grab for them and warily asks again, "For what?"_

"_A letter."_

"_I don't understand, you want to keep one?"_

_He doesn't like the pining look of longing in her eyes as she stares at them._

_Far better he never should have mentioned. Far better to not feel this nagging... repentance._

"_I want you to write a letter, dearie."_

"_Yes!" she says at once. "Deal!" _

_She reaches for the envelopes and he lets them go into her hands, "And in it," he says with disappointment that she so readily agreed; Belle ought to know better than to say 'yes' before all terms have been laid out crystal clear. "You will tell your father or," he waves dismissively at the correspondence, "whomever, that they are to send no more missives."_

"_What? Why?"_

_He scoffs, turning away to exit the room, "Because I say so."_

"_But- that... wait!" She's quicker than she looks, standing in front of him, a hundred pounds soaking wet and wide eyed. "That's not an answer."_

"_It's a great answer." _

_Belle flings her hand out, blocking his exit with her arm stretched over the door._

_Well, then. He's never been trapped in a woman's bedroom before. Certainly not when she was wearing so little and it was hugging her figure like-_

_Never before has he been so careful to keep his eyes trained on someone's face._

"_What harm are letters?" she asks._

"_What harm are words on paper?"_

"_My father's letters?"_

"_A lonely king with wealth and influence?"_

"Rumplestiltskin."

_He chuckles._

"_They're a nuisance. And who knows what unjustly things the two of you gossip about."_

"_Do you want to read them?"_

"_No, I don't want to-"_

"_Scan them for magical booby-traps?"_

_He neither likes being interrupted nor implied he could hold in his hand a curse powerful enough to jinx him and be unawares. He stares at her flatly for daring both._

"_How much of a nuisance can a letter be? Surely it wouldn't take you long to deliver or send anything? Or," out of nowhere Belle deflates, looking worried and mistrustful. "Do you..." she looks down at the letters. "Are you trying to hurt me?"_

_He finds it extraordinary that she looks dumbfounded to think _he'd_ do that. He wants to flick her between the eyes and tell her to think it through and wake up to the reality of her situation here._

_He would, also, greatly like to tell Belle that she's old enough to know that women with _those_ smiles and _that _body do not stretch out with clothes soaked to them._

"_And if I am?"_

_Her brow furrows as she thinks it through but when looks him in the eyes, there's a steely look about her. "Then I wouldn't believe you."_

_Fancy that._

"_I'll make you a deal," Belle says and it's his turn to look intrigued._

"_Oh, is that so?"_

_Belle nods encouragingly like he ought to say yes, here and now._

_That'll be the day._

_She looks around curiously, trying to find something to barter with._

_But she has nothing he wants. Even if she had, he owns her, he owns everything she has. His for the taking so there's nothing to trade with._

_Belle stands there, anxious and shivering and Rumplestiltskin Does Not Look Down. _

_Trinket. Ornament. Maid. Caretaker._

Nothing else.

_Belle smiles suddenly and sways back and forth like a child trying to endear someone into giving them presents._

_Beaming, she says, "I'll be happy."_

_He chokes on her words and that solves one problem at least; stupid women are not attractive. "I give you what you want and in exchange you'll... be happy that I did?"_

"_People do all manner of things when they're happy, Rumplestiltskin. They laugh at unfunny jokes," she looks at him like he's expected to be amused and not offended by this, "they bake cakes and cookies," the girl can't master bacon and eggs, "and sing and dance. Stay up later and wake up earlier, eager to spend time with those making them happy..."_

"_You're terrible at this." _

"_Really? It seems to me like you're getting the better end of the deal."_

"_And when it doesn't make you happy...?" when it makes her sad, regretful and homesick it'll just nag at him that he didn't follow through on his end._

"_It will. Knowing my friends and family are well and thinking of me, will." She looks hopeful but doesn't cave to his wants when he doesn't relent. "Because of you," she wheedles. "Safe and well because of you."_

_Well, she's learning._

"_Talking with them won't make me any less your caretaker," she adds like a mind reader. _

_He raises his eyebrow._

_She looks frustrated. Frustrated and then crafty. "Yours."_

_Oh, nice. It hadn't been what he was going for, but _nice.

_He smirks._

_So does she._

"_It's a good deal," she promises._

_He shakes his head in exasperation and walks past her out the room._

"_Thank you," Belle says, though he can't recall agreeing to anything._

_Rumplestiltskin says, "Of course."_

* * *

Regina's stopped tapping her pen against her teeth when they work in the same room together because it irritates the ever loving hell out of him. She's taken, instead, to drawing when stuck in thought.

And he's grateful.

So grateful that he chooses to be flattered that she's thinking of him and ignores the skull and crossbones she's doodled around his name.

She's asleep on the couch when he walks past her. She looks innocent and soft and he wants to set her hair on fire because she has no right, no right at all, to look peaceful and lovely when she's holding the only woman he's ever loved hostage.

Instead, he taps his pen against her arm as he walks around her, onetwothree, and her shoulder, onetwothree, and the top of her head until she wakes up.

"Don't you ever sleep?" she asks foggily.

"Not when you're around."

Regina stretches out as she wakes up. "Mmm. You're safe, dear." Snide even when half dead to the world. "You're so useful alive."

He taps her nose with his pen to be irritating in return.

She asks, "Have you found something?"

"A greater respect for my tolerance, your Majesty."

Regina nods her head. "I can make use of that."

He's sure she can. "Yourself?" She smiles slowly and, actually, he doesn't want to hear her comeback, "Good, good."

It only makes her smile widen.

She picks up her notebook, looking nauseated at the prospect of getting back to work, and asks, "How do you see this turning out?"

He sits on the table, arranging documents around him for access and organization, "Hmm?"

"Can't you see the future, Rumplestiltskin?"

Ah. Well, "I know I get Belle back." He smiles.

"And how shall I interpret that?"

"However suits you best, I presume."

"I grow tired of your games."

"I think, dearie, that's my line."

Regina smiles like she's won this round. "So it is." He can't imagine why she thinks that.

Their lapse into silence doesn't last long. Regina can't stand another moment of coming _so close_ to a solution only to watch all her hard work fall apart upon closer examination.

Regina asks, "Where is your lover?"

It nags on him every time she refers to Belle thusly.

Regina believes it fact, a perfectly acceptable title to bestow upon his love and as such it vexes him. But, he shudders to think of the conversation that would follow if he corrected her assumptions and so he remains silent on the matter.

He could hazard a guess to Belle's whereabouts, but since they're both here he chooses instead, "She wants to learn magic."

He doesn't know where this desire has come from. She's lived with him, with Regina, where magic is more important than breathing, for years and the want to learn has only taken her now.

"And you're warning me off?"

"I said no such thing, your Majesty."

"Yet." Rumplestiltskin nods his head in agreement. "How lucky for her to have you, then. Of course, your time is valuable. Can you really afford to waste it?"

Rumplestiltskin doesn't rise to bait. Regina doesn't mean it, he knows. While he isn't going mad with frustration, where he's used to years and decades and centuries of research, Regina isn't. She finds the entire process deserving of an outlet, _any _outlet, and Regina wants to keep him happy.

He's considered informing her of how very unwelcome her help is, but he suspects it would only make the vicious loathing that superficially wraps her thoughtful advice triple in cruelty.

"There are easier ways to have power," Regina says. "Get her a gun, she'll never master magic."

Rumplestiltskin doesn't think it's about mastering magic at all. "It's not about power, your Majesty."

"It's always about power."

"Not with Belle, dearie."

Regina runs her fingers through her hair, looking helplessly frustrated. It draws his attention to how very ordinary she looks. In the near century he's known her, she has never looked anything less than supernatural in her ability to be lovely.

"Well," she says, "You'd know better than I."

He _should_ know better than her.

When she looks at him her eyes are indulgent and curious and he's so very tired of having someone on par with his games. Regina asks, "What are you going to teach her? Something cheap?"

Naturally. All magic comes with a price and he would rather Belle not pay too highly.

"Oh, I don't know," he says with a flighty hand wave, "seeing through deception spells? Breaking disguise enchantments? Uncovering the truth of people?"

"I don't think those are _spells_."

"No?" Thoughtfully he nods his acquiesce, "No."

It's not enchantments trapping Belle to Regina, it's the years between them.

Years that could have been his, if he had just...

If he _will_ just trust her. Sit her down and tell her it's not about the power, it's his son. Lost, but not dead, despite his implying otherwise. Bae is the axis his life, his ambitions, revolves around.

He needs to tell her. She deserves to know.

"Maybe if you wish _really hard?_" Regina offers, "It seems to work for you. The dead rose just for you, Rumple." Regina smiles sweet and sickly.

Rumplestiltskin stares at her for a long moment then slowly smiles, unfriendly, "This death wish of yours isn't cute anymore, dearie."

Regina's fingers clench around the pen in her hand and Rumplestiltskin thinks of the people in her life whom she didn't get back. He shouldn't feel joy in that, they did nothing wrong to deserve his scorn, but it's hard not to rejoice just a tad.

They both take a moment to quiet their anger down, pushing it into the places where their wants for revenge and payback go.

"I can no longer tell if you are feigning ignorance or if you truly are so slow," Regina says, shaking her head in disappointment. "The mighty Rumplestiltskin; a legend long before my time. A fool at the heart of it."

"You needn't trouble yourself on behalf of my psyche, dearie."

"And so let you have the advantage?"

She's right, of course. He catalogues her every movement. Rumplestiltskin was one of the many who failed, more than once, to see her coming. She makes him wary and she keeps him alert. Being relaxed in Regina's presence is playing Russian Roulette.

And, yes, it's dangerous to spare more than two words with him, but at the least he's never gutted someone for looking at him askance.

Rumplestiltskin raises his book like a wine glass and toasts, "To silence, then?"

Regina sneers, but relents. "To silence," she agrees.

* * *

Rumplestiltskin is upstairs when he hears Belle shriek. A shocked, panicky sound that piques his interest just enough for him to look down, down in the direction where he'd heard her cries on the floor level below.

He raises his eyebrow, considers his options, and then leans back over his desk. He's busy. He's comfortable. He doesn't want to run to assumed rescues.

Belle yelps, "Regina!" and he tilts his chair back and looks up at the ceiling.

He hears Regina laugh her Evil Queen laugh, which he's always adored for its caricature dramatics, and pushes himself out of his chair. He's curious.

He's there just in time to see Regina throw a cup of dark liquid at Belle, drenching her face and hair and making her freeze in surprise.

He'll go on ahead and assume the spilt drink has something to do with the smell of burning in the kitchen.

There are lights above Belle's head, like animated stars over a wounded cartoon character, though these are whipping around, chaotic and threatening and out of her control.

He doesn't need to look to know he'll find runes and hieroglyphics, candles and the herbs in his spice rack.

Belle has no innate ability to perform magic and only a few days of theory. This is all Regina's doing.

He walks over and stops next to the Queen, the table separating them from Belle, and raises his eyebrow in question.

Regina shrugs.

Belle bats at the fire spark balls thrashing above her, ducking beneath them when they go for her head and snaps, "A little help, then?!"

Helpfully, Regina laughs.

Helpfully, Rumplestiltskin tilts his head and smiles.

Which, to be fair, is kinder than laughing.

This is how Regina learned magic, he's sure of it, with her mother who was no doubt far less kind in teaching.

Cora would not have had Regina's genuine amusement.

Rumplestiltskin flicks a spark that drives too close near him and asks, "What happened?"

"She burned the papyrus before she said 'Occurro.'"

Ah, yes. Ritual magic will bite you every time you deviate.

Occurro: Occur.

Occurro: Attack.

Belle passionately says, "_I did not!_"

Rumplestiltskin takes Belle's vehement disagreement for the fact she must have made the mistake by nanoseconds. That she must not even have noticed.

It's a rookie mistake and one they've all made.

And never admit to.

"Help me!" Belle hisses.

Ah, but Belle is being helped, isn't she? She's not being attacked. A little singed, certainly frazzled, riled and annoyed, but she's not in danger.

She's not in danger because Regina _is_ helping.

Regina's influence keeping the spell in line is the reason they aren't on the phone with police emergency, but he supposes it would be no fun for the Queen if she were to admit to it.

Scratch beneath the surface and there isn't a lot of Cora in Regina at all. He wants to ask what her first realspell was, if it left her bleeding and damaged and what words her mother came up with to express her assessment of her novice talents.

Rumplestiltskin's about to banish the lights when Belle grabs the book to her and flips madly through the pages.

She runs her fingers down the pages, speed reading and getting scorched around the edges.

She bats away the stinging sparks, hissing when they smack into her and then slams her finger down roughly on a line.

Both Regina and Rumplestiltskin lean forward to see if she's correct in what she's found.

Belle looks put out and aggravated when she reaches for the cocktail of herbs to correct the situation.

It's not all _that_ impressive, being able to read a book and end a spell, but he enjoys that she's taking the initiative and not breaking down.

Judging by Regina's expression, she's pleased too.

Pleased, that is, until Belle wraps the herbs in the charred papyrus, mumbles something under her breath and tosses the bundle at Regina, who catches it on instinct.

All those little balls of torment swarm her and Rumplestiltskin ducks quickly out of the way and cracks up. Cackling at Regina's sudden yelp and the way the lights are vicious in their attack without the safety net of a spotter to keep them in line.

It doesn't last long, the spell easily broken at Regina's command, but she's still peppered here and there with burn marks.

Rumplestiltskin puts his hands over his mouth to embellish a look of terrible contriteness for his amusement and even Belle's lips are twitching to smile in vindication.

"Thank you," Belle says, "for your help."

Her words certainly don't sound like gratitude but Rumplestiltskin bows in his servitude anyways. "That's magic, dearie. There's always a price to pay." It's hard to have an overwhelming sense of sympathy for her when absolutely every sorcerer has to go through these trials.

Belle's eyes meet Regina's, throwing down a clear daring gauntlet between them.

Belle pushes her hair, sticky with spilt cola, away from her face and shoulders and says, "If you don't mind..." She grabs the spell book to her with righteous flare and turns sharply to leave them.

Regina hums a sympathetic sound, "That's right, dear," she says, watching Belle exit, "Get back on that horse as soon as possible." The sentiment leaves Regina with a moody sort of look about her as though the words mean something more than they are.

He doesn't like when Regina goes off meaning more than she appears to. She's expecting something and he does not know what.

Regina doesn't acknowledge him for another moment yet and when she finally does turn to him she has a suddenly bright smile that's incredibly unnerving. "I have something for you." She nods her head that he should follow her.

She leads him back to the den and, once again, is shoving papers at him.

There're half a dozen pages, three of which include scatter graphs, pie graphs, things that look like candlesticks and _why does Regina have charts?_

Oh, god. Is she back to homework assignments?

At least there are insulting doodles around the edges to show she was thinking in picture grids and not just dissertations.

At the center of it all is, "Lake Nostos?"

"You used the Well," yes, because it always comes back to what _he _did, "and the Well is from..." she pauses, nods her head in correction, and adds, "contains some of Nostos' water."

He has to think on it and while he does she begins talking just that bit faster, "It's how you connected our world to this one. It's the conduit, Rumplestiltskin, why not turn it into the _source_? After all, you said-"

"No need to get defensive. I understand." He understands and doesn't need her to draw him a literal picture in order to win him over.

"And you agree."

"I don't disagree." But they can't very well bust out shovels and dig their way into the Enchanted Forest.

And even if they could, Lake Nostos was never pure magic and, like everything else, it too has been corrupted by this land.

Her, ugh, area graph begins with Nostos and spikes out to the areas it has contaminated and where it has _possibly _spread off to in degrees of potency. Her network diagram shows different, failed and conceivably successful, methods and conclusions.

Regina crowds his space, leaning into him until they're touching so she can obsessively see which threads he's crossing out as immediate failures.

He turns his head to look pointedly at her but when she meets his eyes it's clear she doesn't understand his deliberately raised eyebrow. She cards her fingers through the pages he holds and pulls one out of his hands.

There are scripts of smudged cursive writing going on and on about DNA. He throws his head back in frustration.

"Already, Rumple?" she says in response to his instant rebuff, "You haven't heard my idea."

"Well, dearie, it's hard to take seriously without pictures."

And they can't very well re-write human DNA.

...can they?

Is that what the knife of the Dark One did?

But even if it had, it would take more time than he can bear to find the method, means and... What? Multiplying bacteria? Mutating virus?

Rumplestiltskin runs his hand over his eyes.

All right, no. Back, back, back.

To her chagrin he dismisses the page back to the end of her notes. "Lake Nostos," he repeats.

She seems mollified that he didn't trash the paper and might therefore go back to the joke of a theory.

They need something that won't spread and liquid spreads through everything, goes anywhere, into the bloodstream and membranes and skin and organs and...

They need that which will contain itself only to a specific living organism. Microorganisms to grow and reproduce and water does nothing but evaporate.

They need... to latch onto particular cells in the body and there's no such thing as a broad spectrum single virus. It's why there's no one antiviral to save the world.

While the image of Regina's head inflamed or her respiratory system seizing is, indeed, lovely, it's not productive to his plans.

He sighs. These are all the same problems he's been having. Regina has yet to fall a step behind him in this mad plan of hers but that's not to say he's following behind.

All right, no. Back, back, back.

The Wishing Well.

No.

Not that.

The Wishing Well vs. True Love.

True Love poisoning the water, right. Back to basics. True Love powerful enough to kick up a storm of magic, kick start the small glimmer of the power from the Enchanted Forest's realm and blow the Well wide open.

But Regina isn't an ingredient powerful enough to transcend realms.

And, of course, there's still the problem of the body's natural immune system that kicks out hijackers trying to latch on.

No.

Not that.

Regina is watching him like a vulture, quiet and treacherous. When he looks at her she straightens in anticipation, like his silent consideration of ideas has led him to the perfect conclusion.

He feels almost disappointed in himself, like a failure of an authority figure, that he's about to let down a child who has so much faith in him. Who believes there is nothing beyond his capability.

Then he remembers how much he hates Regina, and why, and feels better about it.

He shakes his head and Regina looks up at the ceiling like his frustration has absolutely nothing on her own.

He drops himself into a chair, kicks his feet up on the seat and says, "From the top."

* * *

Rumplestiltskin's thoughts go into overdrive the next day, thinking on their dialogue. His ideas are bouncing around insanely in his brain, unable to find order and balance. He feels so very close to beating them into uniformity that his nerves are stinging with the frustration of the solution so close to his fingertips.

Rumplestiltskin needs symmetry.

He evicts the idea that Regina might have unearthed a profound conclusion that she hasn't yet shared but he wants to hear her thoughts on the matter, just once more. A simple odd phrasing on her part could inspire the disorder inside his mind to find peace.

He asks Belle, "Where's Regina?"

"Her room, I think."

Everything is so possessive in his mind that he privately reshuffles Belle's words into, 'the room you gave her.'

He's halfway up the stairs when he hears Belle's voice, sudden with realization, call out, "She wants to be alone."

Belle might care for Regina's privacy but if Regina wants his help she has to accept it day or night and whenever he so deigns to give it.

He can feel the magic outside her room as he gets closer. She's enchanting his house and that is ten kinds of irritating.

Belle's there to hold his hand back when he, magnanimously, tries to knock on the door.

He can't look at her for a moment, needing a second to curb his irritation that Belle's supporting Regina again.

"Belle -"

Belle shakes her head 'no' and says, "Shh."

He considers digging his feet in and refusing to be moved when she tries to pull him back but her look of disappointment overwhelms his own into acquiesce.

"I don't want to argue with you over this," Belle says, her voice whisper soft, steely and resolved.

"I'm not arguing." She knows what it's like when he argues and he hasn't begun. "But why are you doing this, dearie?"

And it's so much more than knocking on a door. So much more than Belle requesting peace between them.

Belle pulls him back further at his insistence not to lower his voice. "No," she says, "I'm not dealing with you."

He waves off the notion as not being the point of his question, "I'm not dealing today."

Belle looks away, thoughtfully considering her options. He thinks she's going to walk away and leave him continually guessing but when she looks back at him she nods, "She's done things," Belle says slowly, "for me. That... no one else would have."

Rumplestiltskin blinks. There isn't a thing on this, or any other, earth that he would not bend over backwards to give to her. "Not even me?"

Belle takes a breath and says, honestly, "I don't know. I just know you didn't."

"What?" he asks, "What is it?"

Rumplestiltskin, the coward, too afraid to meet this denial and conquer it.

Regina's voice, defensive and angry, snaps out on the other side of the door, "He's _my_ son," she says with brittle venom in her tone. "I want to talk to him, _Princess _Swan."

Belle and Rumplestiltskin freeze.

He hadn't cared to consider whatshe had enchanted in the room, but nothing will now convince him it wasn't a mirror.

Belle knew. She knows. _Of course she does. _

"Tell me," he doesn't mean the words to sound unkind but it's the love of his life and his greatest enemy. It's the need Regina has to cling and the kindness Belle indiscriminately possesses.

It's that he doesn't know when Regina stole Belle's heart.

He doesn't know when Regina stole her.

He doesn't know and it's thin ice to make Regina tell him.

"Please," she says, "I don't want to-"

Regina's voice behind the door says, "Henry," with relief that's painfully sincere.

Even when she's not trying, Regina makes the world revolve around her.

Rumplestiltskin invades Belle's space and whispers, like she wants him to, "You're asking for a lot, Belle."

Belle laughs softly, looks up at the ceiling and avoids eye contact with the man who is pushing incredible gall to say such words.

But he's right and she knows it. She knows it so she acquiesces, "I lost someone," she says, "That I loved with all my heart."

"Who?" he asks, not wanting to assume.

Regina says, "I am." He can hear delighted, muted and incredulous tears in Regina's voice, "I am okay."

He draws Belle away from the hallway as Regina says, "I miss you," to her son.

"Who did you lose?" Was it him? Is he the cause of all of this?

"It doesn't matter," Belle says, her voice still soft though there's no threat of interrupting the Queen now. "Not anymore." There's steel in her tone, the sound of someone who's moved on. "But... it changed me." She makes the words sound like a question and it makes him, in turn, unsure if it's fact. "It..." She makes a helpless gesture with her hands; she doesn't want to say the words.

Overwhelmed, then? Defeated? Did it break her?

Rumplestiltskin reaches out to take her hands but she lowers them away from him. It doesn't seem a hostile nor pointed gesture and he tries not to take it as such. "You understand?" she asks.

"Yes. Yes, I do."

"She believed in me." Belle looks like she's pulling teeth, but she doesn't cry and he certainly hopes that's not for his benefit, "And no one else did, Rumplestiltskin. No one."

Belle doesn't even bother to hide the fact she knows the Queen had alternate motivations in return for her help_._ It's in her eyes; she knows Regina's actions came with self-profit.

Belle looks too close to being overwhelmed by the topic for him to push it. Despite the reasons, Belle believes she's received more than Regina did from it.

He can wait; he has infinite skill at patience.

"You don't have to do this for her. You don't owe her this."

"You don't know that."

"No one knows _that_ better than I, dearie."

"I'm sorry," Belle says, and it breaks his heart that she isn't, "I'm so sorry. This isn't-" She bites her lip and he can see the effort she's putting into not looking away. To face him head on. "It's not supposed to hurt you."

He almost believes with her. Almost.

But she must know now, as she must have done then, that it would hurt him.

"It's not forever," she reminds him.

Whatever she owes Regina, he owes Belle double. He doesn't believe her, but he can absolve her. He wants to absolve her as he's wanted her forgiveness for decades. "It's not forever," he agrees.

Instantly she looks like a great weight has been lifted from her shoulders. "Come," he teases, "You can stop me from setting her things on fire." After a moment's pause he scrunches his nose like that was a distasteful offer. "Would you like to see what a 'fire extinguisher' is?"

Belle laughs and wraps her arm tightly around his waist as they walk down the stairs.

* * *

**Notes:**

Much thanks to Nym for not minding me borrowing her Rumbelle ribbons and to Katers007 for knowing Latin and being a fantastic beta! :)

Thank you to all the lovely reviewers, I'm delighted you like my story!


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